Thyme and Thyme Again
by AngelBornOfHell
Summary: She wishes she had more than an old fading photograph and five ribbons, but she doesn't, so she holds on to them tighter than she holds on to life.
1. That Girl

She knows she is inferior. If she knows nothing else, she knows that much, at least. She cannot pin a fly to the wall with a knife like _that girl_ can. She cannot really enjoy causing pain and senseless bloodshed like _that girl_ can. When she looks at herself critically, she cannot do much of anything, actually. So she is not surprised when he falls in love with _that girl_. She is hurt, yes, and more than a little upset, but she is not surprised. She is a healer, and he does not need a healer, because never gets hurt. No, he needs _that girl_, someone who has his back in a fight, someone who can hold their own, someone he doesn't have to worry about.

* * *

><p>She <em>is <em>surprised to see him on her doorstep one day for reasons other than running an errand. Their mothers have been friends since girlhood, and so the two of them have been acquaintances since infancy. She thinks that "acquaintances" can be replaced with "friends." She hopes so, at least. They see each other quite frequently, whether it be their mothers visiting one another, or simply running into each other in the market. But the only time he ever shows up at her doorstep alone is if he's running an errand. He's too busy training to simply drop by for friendly chatting, and she knows it. So when there's a furious pounding on her door (he never pounds the door) and a hollering of her mother's name (he always politely addresses her mother), she flies downstairs and flings the door open, expecting the worst. District 2 is a quarrying district. She hazards a guess that Cato's father has been horrifically wounded in an accident (and prays that she's wrong).

She _is_ wrong, but not in the way she wanted to be. It is Cato, holding his side, blood staining his shirt and dripping viscously down his fingers. Without a second word, she pulls him inside helps him sit on work table.

"Lie down," she commands. He obeys, but only momentarily, as he sits back up to watch her fetch her tools: needle, thread, scissors, gauze, basin of water, washcloth, ointment. She sets these on a bench and, placing a hand on his chest, firmly pushes him back down.

"I said _lie down_, Cato," her voice stern and reprimanding, but she can't hide the quirk of her lips as he smirks devilishly up at her. Her heart flutters for a moment before something tells her (in the harshest tone imaginable) that this is how he smiles at every girl. That she is nothing special to him.

"Think you can manage taking your shirt off?" He actually chuckles at this one.

"You just can't resist me, can you?" Even when cut and bloodied, he manages to slide that dangerously seductive tone into his voice that has caused many a girl to swoon. She arches an eyebrow, unamused, although inside, her heart is pounding like the jackhammers that chip away at the granite quarries day in and day out. She hopes it doesn't show.

"Take it off," she deadpans, "or I'll cut it off for you, and you know I'm not all that great with knives. Who knows. Maybe my hand will slip and I might end up taking an inch of skin off along with your shirt." He sighs and rolls his eyes as he begins slowly, agonizingly tugging off his shirt, wincing as his wound is stretched further open.

"You're no fun."

"I know." The shirt now properly removed, she dips the cloth into the basin and begins to wipe away the blood and sweat, smirking lightly as he hisses in pain. Her amusement does not go unnoticed.

"This isn't funny," he growls, and she would probably be a little intimidated if it weren't for the fact that he was actually _hissing_ in _pain_ as she cleaned up his wound.

"No," she agrees. "This isn't funny." She pauses. "It's hilarious. How the hell did this happen anyways?" He glares at her, and she stares unflinchingly back into his icybluebeautifSTOP eyes.

"It was that little bitch Clove. She caught me with a knife during training." Her smirk grows wider as he fumes. And while she finds the whole situation hilariously ironic, that the invincible _Cato _has been injured, her heart cracks a little more when she can hear the undercurrent of love and admiration he has for _that girl_, even when he's cursing her, even when she's cut him open.

"Can you believe it. The great and mighty Cato, taken down by a girl smaller than his little sister." As much as she hates torture, she takes great joy out of puncturing Cato's ego. He snarls, both in anger and pain as she begins stitching up the wound, her fingers delicately working needle and thread, pulling together the sliced skin into something whole again. "You're lucky she didn't cut through to the muscle, or else this would take a lot longer." He grunts in acknowledgment as she continues repairing the wound, needles sliding through his skin like a warm knife through butter. "I was under the impression that the training center had an emergency room."

"Idiots over there couldn't fix a paper cut. And I was looking for your mother, but since she's not here, I have to settle for you."

"A tragedy, I'm sure," she mock-laments. "Now tell me, did you return the favor?" Cato grins at this.

"Let's just say she won't be throwing any knives with that left arm for a while." She is pleased, in a twisted way. She knows she shouldn't be. A healer should never be pleased by pain. A healer...well..._heals_ pain. The rest of the procedure is carried out in silence. She cuts off the thread, knots it, rubs on some ointment, and wraps a strip of gauze around his waist.

"There, that should keep your stitches from tearing out. Just try not to stretch your waist too much, or I'll have to redo the stitches and you might rip your skin open again." He slams an open palm against the wooden table.

"I can't wait! I have to go back to training. The Reaping is in six months!" Her heart twists a little at the inevitable, but she keeps her face as cold and inexpressive as the granite quarries of her home district.

"Yes, I'm sure you'll make _so _much progress with your side torn and bleeding." She pulls on the gauze extra-hard as she ties it up, causing him to wince in pain. "See? Even that hurts. You can't train like this." He growls again and she pats his arm, half-consolingly, half-mockingly. "If it makes you feel any better, she's probably in the same state right now." He chuckles, and her heart skips a beat.

* * *

><p>She sends him home with a small pot of ointment, a long strip of gauze, and instructions on how to change the bandages. She doesn't expect to see him again any time soon. But he shows up on her doorstep again the next day, with a polite knocking on the door and a curt utterance of her name. He bears a gift of five ribbons (blue, black, white, green, red) and makes it clear that he's only doing this on his mother's orders, and if it was up to him, he'd bring her a rock in thanks for her treatment.<br>"I know." She smirks, but inside, she is ecstatic with the present. She keeps one of the ribbons in her hair every day for the rest of her life.

* * *

><p>He spends more and more time with<em> that girl<em> now. They are mainly seen entering and leaving the training center, exchanging snarky comments and cocky grins and loving glances. She tries not to gag. Or worse, cry. She tells herself that _that girl _is who he needs. _That girl_ is strong and confident and lethal, remorselessly so. He is a warrior, and warriors have a better chance of surviving if they have another warrior watching their back. She is not a warrior, but _that girl_ is. If she really loves him, she will want what is best for him, and she decides that _that girl_ is best for him. So when she runs into the pair of them in the marketplace, she swallows down a sob (weak weak _weak_) and schools her features into a pleasant smile.

"Hello, Cato. Hey, Clove." He grins back, while _that girl_ smirks. It is not a friendly smirk, not like his smirks.

"Hey. What're you doing here?" he asks. She sees his arm wrapped around _that girl's_ waist and green flashes before her eyes.

"Just picking up some supplies. We're running low on needles and gauze. You?" He is about to answer when _that girl_ rolls her eyes and cuts him off.

"Come _on_, Cato. The best knives'll be gone if we don't go now." And he lets _that girl _drag him away. She can hear _that girl_ ask him, with a caustic edge, "Who the hell does that useless bitch think she is? Assuming that you _care_ about the shit she has to say." She pauses, waiting for his response, praying that he stands up to her. And he rises to the occasion magnificently.

"_Don't you _dare _talk about her like that_! _I care about what she has to say more than you will _ever _know_!" he roars, causing all innocent bystanders to flinch and shy away from the towering boy. She smiles at his indignation on her behalf. It is all she needs.


	2. All By Myself

It is the Spring Equinox Festival, and most of District 2 is gathered in the square for a whole day of celebration. The sun burns and the air is muggy with the heat and sweat of too many people crammed into too small a space, but it is a day off from work and school and training, and nobody is stupid enough not to take advantage of it. She weaves her way between the revelers, looking for nothing in particular, looking for nothing but him. They came to the festival together, because their mothers wanted to go together and therefore dragged their children along. She didn't want to go this year. She used to always want to go, for the color and laughter and the dancing. There is dancing at every festival, and in the years before, Cato would save the slow dances for her. He said it was because he didn't want to look pathetic, not dancing with anyone, and she was the least objectionable choice. She doesn't really care. Knowing Cato, "least objectionable" is the nearest he will ever get to complimenting anyone.  
>But this year will be different, because he will be dancing with <em>that girl<em>, and she will be left to watch on the sidelines. She knows that he was never hers in the first place, but she likes to think that those dances were something special that only she would have. But she decides that seeing him for a short time would be better than not seeing him at all, so she puts on a green linen frock and heads out with her mother to Cato's house. When they arrive, their mothers greet each other with much enthusiasm. She and Cato size each other up with smirks on their faces, evaluating the other's choice of clothing. He is dressed simply, in a white shirt and dark grey-black jeans, with his old work boots.

"Hey, there. You look...green." She rolls her eyes in mock-exasperation.

"Hey, _Cato_. You look...monochromatic."

"You mean 'dashingly handsome'." (Yes, yes she does.)

"No, I mean monochromatic." He's about to come up with a witty retort when his mother cuts in and fixes him with a look only a mother could give.

"Now, now, Cato. Play nice." He sighs.

"_Yes, mother_."

"Very good. Now start over."

"Hello. You look...nice."

"Hello. You look..._dashingly handsome_." He scowls. She laughs. "You make this too easy, Cato." He rolls his eyes and shakes his head in true exasperation. And with that, they head off. He finds _that girl_ relatively quickly. Technically, _that girl _was waiting for him at the butcher's, the first store they pass on their way to the town square. He shouts a fast "Bye!" before running off to _that girl_. _That girl _shoots a victorious glance at her before walking off, and she waves half-heartedly at his retreating back.

* * *

><p>She regrets agreeing to come to the festival. Being the healer's daughter, she is well-versed in poisons, and nobody wants to be friends with the girl who can kill you in your sleep without ever getting caught. So she wanders around the square alone, trying not to look at anything, because everything reminds her of him. And yet, in the middle of her self-pity-fest, the more practical side of her screams that she's being completely pathetic and stupid right now, throwing away a day of fun just because he's not here. She agrees with whatever voice is shouting at her and buys herself an apple tart, her favorite.<p>

* * *

><p>The nearly-vanished sun leaves little more than a scarlet fringe along the edge of the violet sky, and the lights strung up across the square flicker on. For a little while, she forgets that she lives in a granite quarry, because this is the one day of the year when, for her, District 2 becomes more beautiful than the Capitol. She's only ever seen glimpses of it from the annual Hunger Games broadcasts, but in comparison to the velvet sky and buttery glow of the lightbulbs, the Capitol's neon lights seem too gaudy, too garish.<p>

* * *

><p>The fiddles are playing folk reels from a time before the concept of "Districts" and a "Capitol" have ever been conceived, and she joins in the dancing, kicking her heels into the air and clapping to the beat. She always did love dancing, and loses herself in the twirling skirts and stamping boots, hair flying every which way. The steps come to her naturally, like walking and talking, and she doesn't have to think. The music stops much too soon for her liking, although she is trying to catch her breath, giddy from the exertion. She remembers why she loves the Spring Festival, until the fiddles segue into an old ballad, slow and melodic. And now she remembers why she hates this one.<p>

She makes her way between the crowd, between the couples finding each other and holding each other in their arms. District 2 may be made of stone, but its inhabitants, however hardened, are still human, and very much so. She retreats to a stone bench off to the side, and catches sight of her parents, swaying back and forth in each others' arms, a blissful smile on her mother's face and a content expression on her father's. She smiles, and decides that her temporary heartbreak is a small price to pay for her parents' happiness. And then she sees him, dancing with _that girl_, laughing at something _that girl_ said, and she can see love in the way he looks at her, in the way he holds her close with arms that could wield a sword just as easily as make a girl feel safe (and loved, she knows).

Just last year, that girl in his arms was _herself_. Just last year, the girl every girl wanted to be and secretly wanted to kill was _herself_. And now she watches the new happy couple (gag retch sob) like one of those jealous, jilted, ex-lovers in the trashy romance novels that are so popular at school. She now understands why jilted ex-lovers are so often driven to murder, suicide, madness, or some combination of the three. She pointedly ignores the fact that she was never a lover in the first place. The music winds to an end, they separate, and the flutes and the fiddles begin their wild mountain airs. She springs off the bench, grateful for the timely musical intervention, and resumes dancing. If dancing could let her forget everything, she would dance until her feet bled and her legs collapsed.


	3. Almost Lover

Violet skies give way to deep, velvety, cobalt, as the band winds up the night with one last song, a wistful, lilting tune. The Midsummer Festival always ends with this song, and this time, she is prepared to just walk straight home. There is no point in torturing herself with watching again. She turns for home when a very familiar hand grabs her arm. She turns, wondering why she dreads this so very much. Hasn't she wanted this all evening? He stares at her, and she would lose herself in his eyes, except for the fact that she is somewhere between flying-over-the-moon and terrified-out-of-her-wits.

"Dance with me." It is not so much of a request as a command. And who is she to disobey a direct command from the great Cato himself? So she lets herself be pulled into his arms, falling into the familiar feeling of them wrapped tightly around her waist. But she feels obligated to remind him, however half-heartedly, that he is in fact in what is, for all intents and purposes, a committed relationship.

"What about Clove?" she murmurs into the crook of his neck.

"I told her. And besides, she left."

"She's okay with this?"

"Doesn't matter if she isn't. I can do whatever I want."

There are few things she wouldn't do to live in this moment forever, with her forehead resting on his shoulder, her arms clasped comfortably behind his neck, and his arms around her waist, pulling her close, fingers gently tangling themselves in the ends of her hair. She wants this, just this, to feel him and her this close together forever. Because right now, it's just them. District 2 doesn't exist. The Capitol doesn't exist. And for now, the Games don't exist. It's just her and Cato and their world, this half-world, made up of halves: half-lives, half-identities, half-love. It's dysfunctional and more than a little broken, but she doesn't care. He is here, and she is here, and now they are not so much dancing as they are simply standing there, locked into each other, feeling the other's heartbeats and breaths. She's never felt safer, happier, more _peaceful_anywhere else.

The music begins to fade, and she knows it is about to end. She thinks she'd volunteer as tribute if it meant that this would never end. She lifts her head and looks straight into his eyes.

"Why," she whispers.

He regards her for a moment, and then his face breaks into a smile. A _real_smile.

"The last dance will always be for you."

And she smiles back. And it is just the two of them again, smiling at each other, still locked together. But nothing in this world or the next could have prepared her for what followed.

He kisses her.

It warm and slow and soft and chaste, and she's not entirely sure where she is anymore, and contemplates the possibility that she died last night while asleep and is now in the next world, because there is no way that Cato would kiss her in this world. She finds herself kissing him back, throwing all thoughts of possible consequences and _that girl_ to the wind. She still has no idea where she is, and her mind is running in eight different circles at the same time because he's kissing her, he's really kissing her, why is he kissing her, is she kissing him back (yes she is), how did this happen, is everyone watching (probably, most likely), what if _that girl_ finds out, does it matter if _that girl_ finds out, and _oh dearest lord_he's kissing her and it might very well be the most wonderful thing ever.

They break apart for air, and there is a sort of stunned silence between the two of them. They let go of each other, and stare (and stare and stare), trying to figure out exactly what happened and where does everything go from here, and they take a step back, because nothing makes sense right now. And they turn away and run.

* * *

><p>She runs and runs while the world spins and doesn't stop until she gets to her room. Her lips are burning with something forbidden, and she feels the overwhelming urge to scrub them off with alcohol and soap, as if alcohol and soap could undo what has transpired. But she doesn't. She can't bring herself to. Yes, the burning makes her feel more than a little trampy, but she has wanted this for so long, she's not willing to throw it away in the name of morals or honor or anything else so fleeting and - frankly - useless. She laughs a little ruefully at the realization that despite all her high-and-mighty and self-sacrificing ways, she's displaying the same total and utter disregard for morality that is characteristic of District 2's tributes and is the cause of such hatred from the other Districts. She's somewhat beyond caring at this point. So she climbs into her bed lies there, just lies there, on top of the covers, tears streaming down her face, burning salty tracks into her skin. She's not too sure why she's crying. Maybe because the whole thing felt like an accident, he didn't really mean to kiss her, he was just caught up with it all, but it was a one-time fluke, never to happen again. You got what you wanted, that same shouting-voice-of-reason tells her. No, she thinks. I didn't want <em>this<em>.

* * *

><p>Apologies for the short chapter! Next one shall be longer. Hopefully.<p> 


	4. Sugar, We're Goin' Down

_AN: Apologies for the late update! I just finished my midterms, so I was busy…Hope you enjoy this chapter!_

They do not speak. They do not make eye contact. It goes on for one week, two weeks, three weeks. She entertains thoughts of poisoning him just so she won't have to deal with the aftermath. At night, her mind runs through a list of possibilities: hemlock, aconite, baneberry, castor beans, death camas, foxglove, may apple...the idea is certainly enticing. Not only would it end the awkward non-acknowledgment, it would also end the whole love triangle between her, Cato, and _that girl_. Yes, poisoning him is starting to look quite brilliant. But days pass, and she cannot think of a viable opportunity, not with the two of them avoiding each other like the plague. His wound has healed, so there's no chance of mixing hemlock into his ointment. They never come close enough to make skin contact, and so she cannot hope to smear may apple juice into his skin. She snarls in frustration one night, having exacted possible methods of poisoning Cato. She grabs her needles and her razors (she leaves the poison-tipped ones at home, in case she nicks herself) and sneaks into the training center.

* * *

><p>The training center is dark and abandoned, the way she wants it to be. She walks over to the training dummies and rolls up her sleeves and pants legs. There, four straps of weapons run neatly down her arms and calves, one on each, like so many rows of snake fangs. She crouches down. And she begins to dance.<p>

In quick succession, she pulls out three razors from each calf strap, gripping each between two fingers, her hands clenched into fists. She imagines all the dummies to be Cato, and leaps forward, slashing out at one dummy, then the other, landing in a roll. Chest, torso. Not bad. Leap again. Slash, slash, land, rip, stand, twirl, duck, slash. Face, neck, thigh, wrist. Much better. She throws the razorblades, and all six of them sink cleanly into the dummies' abdomens. The needles are pulled out of their holders, and she begins flinging them with an air of lazy cruelty. One in each eye, a few under the chin, she makes a point of viciously stabbing every soft spot on the human head. More razors, slicing major arteries and veins, severing tendons. A small part of her registers that this isn't making her happy, not the way _that girl_ is made happy by causing pain. No, she feels nothing but rage as she stabs and cuts with cold, surgical precision, and she's not quite sure which is worse, _that girl's _sadistic glee, or her calculated fury. But she's in no mood to be moralistic or philosophical tonight, so she continues cutting up the dummies, losing herself in the rhythm of slicing and ripping and spinning. This, she knows, is the only useful skill that arose from her love of dancing. Her mind thinks of nothing but vulnerable spots and needlepoints and blades, and she is poised to throw another set of razors, when an unexpected voice breaks her flow.

"Well, well, well. What do we have-" The voice is cut off as she spins around and flings the razors at the source of the voice. But they are harmlessly deflected by a sword, and she can hear the soft clang of metal against metal, and then the clinking sound of her razors tumbling on polished concrete. There is a pause, as he grins cockily at her, and she stares in wide-eyed disbelief. Disbelief turns to fresh rage as she realizes exactly who it is.

"_YOU!_" She snarls, and she begins throwing her of needles and blades at him, pulling them out of holsters and dummies and flinging them indiscriminately at him. His smile falters as he concentrates on blocking her weapons.

"What is _wrong_with you, woman?" he shouts, clearly not expecting such anger and violence from her, as he blocks her attacks.

"What's _wrong _with me_?_" Her words are punctuated with more flying projectiles. "_You_" -fling- "have the _nerve_" -hurl-"to ask what's _wrong_" -launch- with me? You _kissed_me!" Insert hailstorm of pointy objects here.

His face registers bewilderment. Of course it does. He's male. A teenage male. He is not to be expected to understand the subtleties and nuances of human relationships. If she weren't so furious at him, she'd sit him down and launch into a detailed lecture about why it was _not_ okay to kiss a girl when you're already in a relationship with another one, and then why it _also_not okay to ask the aforementioned girl what was wrong with her after kissing her and then not talking to her for three weeks.

"..._So?_" Did he really just say that? Yes, yes he did. She swears he's driving her crazy on purpose, because no human being could possibly be _this_dense. Right?

"So? _SO?_ Are you _serious_?" She's no longer really aiming by this point. Instead, she's just flinging her blades and needles around wildly, hoping that _something_ will hit him. "You _kissed _me! And then you don't _talk_to me?" His eyebrows furrow at this.

"Wait a minute. _You _didn't talk to _me_ either! And you kissed me _back_!" She freezes for a second. So he's not as dense as she thought. Damn him.

"_SHUT UP!_" she screeches, resuming her barrage. "Just _shut up_! _You're_ the one who started it, _you're_ the one with a girlfriend, _you're _the one who doesn't love me, so just _fuck off_!" She is dangerously near tears now, but she will kill herself before she shows weakness in combat. Blame it on the District 2 in her, but her sense of dignity-in-the-face-of-mortal-dueling is somewhat skewed to the extreme.

The last statement has apparently caught Cato by surprise, because his sword arm completely drops, and the most bewildered, puzzled, confused, discombobulated expression overcomes his face.

"What makes you think I don't love you?"

"_Oh, for the love of God!_" she shrieks, and throws a razor dangerously near Cato's face. He is caught unawares, and the blade nicks his cheekbone. There is a frozen silence. His sword drops to the polished concrete floor with a deafening metallic clang. She can see the blood begin to well up, and a thin trickle runs down his cheek. The confusion in his eyes turns to rage. Her eyes widen in panic. He charges at her, and she is a deer caught in the headlights.

"_What makes you think I don't love you?_" he roars, grabbing her shoulders in a vise grip. "_Huh?_"

She tries to answer, but everything is caught in her throat. She has seen him angry, angrier than this, but he has never been more than mildly annoyed with her. His fingers are crushing her shoulders. She knows there will be five finger-shaped bruises on each side the next day. If she lives to see the next day. His breath is coming in short, fast gasps, chest heaving with rage. His ice-blue eyes are bright with fury and wrath and..._pain_?

"_Answer me!_" he roars again, shaking her by the shoulder for good measure.

"You love Clove!" she blurts out. "You love Clove, not me. That's why you're with Clove, not me. And that's why you should've kissed _her_, not_ me_." Her voice hitches as she finishes. She wills herself not to cry, but it's too late. She can feel hot, angry tears running down her face.

"Why are you so _stupid_?" he shouts, but with less anger than before. "Why do you think I saved the last dance for you? Why do you think I gave you those ribbons?" His voice begins to rise with each question. "Why do you think I let you stitch me up? Why do you think I beat up the bastards that were making fun of you back when we were kids? _Why do you think I kissed you_?"

"A mistake," she murmurs. "You made a mistake."

"I never make mistakes," he hisses, his voice now low and deadly.

"Yes, you do. You did that time Clove caught you with her knife. You did just now when I got you with my razor. You make mistakes all the time, Cato."

"_I kissed you because I love you!_"

The words hang in the silence, echoing.

"Explain Clove," she whispers.

He sighs.

"I...break things. Everything. So I thought if I...maybe...I wouldn't break you." His chin lifts, and he looks straight at her, and she can see the things left unsaid. _I thought if I was with Clove, maybe you'd stay far away enough so that I wouldn't break you. I was afraid of breaking you. I was afraid of loving you_.

"Cato..."

"Yeah?"

"That...was the most stupid thing I ever heard from you." She can feel the anger rise up, and places a hand on his chest to placate him. "I don't break so easily, Cato. I'm District 2, just like you. We're made of the same stone."

He pulls her close, crushing his body against hers, and kisses her. Not soft, like the first time, but desperate and deep and hot. Their legs begin to give out, and the sink, together, to the polished concrete floor.


	5. Something That I Want

She doesn't remember having been this happy in a long, long time. They are by no means a normal couple: he never sends her flowers or candy (sending flowers is for weddings and funerals, he says, and too much candy will make her fat), and she has no qualms about destroying his ego at every given opportunity. But almost every night they find themselves lying together, side-by-side on the polished concrete training center floors, not talking so much as relishing the other's presence, because there is always the lingering knowledge that the Reapings are two months away. He takes her to the top of the mountain one day, and they can see the wide, rolling expanse of tallgrass and foothills.

"I'll take you there, Thyme. One day," he declares.

"Take me where?"

"There." He points to a place far off in the distance. The idea of leaving District 2 makes her a little dizzy, although it could just be the wind and the altitude.

"Would you take our families?"

"Yeah. Yeah, of course." And now she tries to imagine living on the prairie, away from Peacekeepers and quarrying accidents and _Reapings_. But the fact remains that they would never make it. They would be caught, tortured, killed.

"We couldn't go. We wouldn't make it," she whispers. "They would kill us."

"No they wouldn't. When I come back as a victor, they'll let me do anything I want. They couldn't stop me." His voice becomes steely with determination and anger, and she is afraid. Afraid of what he would do if he could. Afraid of what his anger implies.

"Yes, they could. They could, Cato. They might not be able to kill you, but they'd kill your parents. My parents. They'd kill everyone that mattered to you." She silently begs him to see reason. He can't carry on in this strain. It'd kill them all.

"I'd kill them before they got to you, before they got to our families. I could do it." His voice begins to rise to a half-shout, and she looks around them in panic, hoping that nobody was close enough to hear.

"No, you couldn't, Cato. You're great with a sword, but they have _guns_, Cato. And explosives and tranquilizer darts and hovercraft. We'd all die before you could do anything. _I _would die." She prays that the last sentence is enough to make him stop. And she is right. His body, which was tensed with anger and simmering rage earlier, slumps in resignation and frustration. She reaches for his hand and he grabs it, their fingers intertwining almost painfully as they stand on the mountain top, looking down at the world that will never be theirs.

* * *

><p>They never go the mountain anymore. It reminds them too much of what-could-have-been, and it hurts too much to be so close to the freedom they will never have. They spend their nights in the training center instead. It ties them to reality.<p>

* * *

><p>"It's my turn to volunteer this year," he says, on a typical training-center night. She knows. She knows very well and she hates it.<p>

"Shut up," she growls.

"It's okay, Thyme. I'll win, I'll come home, and then everything will be like it used to be.

"I said, shut _up_." She rolls onto her side, back facing Cato, so he can't see the tears threatening to spill onto her face. He turns over and wraps her in his arms, and he can feel her body shuddering softly with sobs.

"Hey, hey. I said I'd come back, didn't I? The odds are in my favor." She sniffles a bit.

"It's the Games, Cato. The odds are in _nobody's _favor."

"They're in _our_favor," he insists. And she decides to let him win this one as she curls into his embrace.

She's missed her cycle, and her appetite's been a little off lately, but she writes it off as stress and nerves due to the impending Reapings.

"Did you talk to Clove yet?" She's sitting next to Cato, holding her knees, head resting on his shoulder.

"Yeah."

"And?"

"Well, she threw a knife at me at first. What's up with you girls and throwing pointy things at me, anyways?"

She shoots a bored, disbelieving glance at him.

"You're kidding me, right? You just dumped her, for God's sake. For the worst reason ever, might I add. And _before_that, you made the equally stupid decision of getting with another girl to...what was it again? Keep me safe? And you wonder why we like to throw pointy things at you."

Cato sputters in indignation.

"I broke up with her to be with you! You! And then before that, I was trying to _protect_you! How is any of this my fault?"

"Never mind. Your denseness is impossible. What happened after she threw a knife at you?"

"Here's the funny part. She said she was actually sort of expecting this to happen the entire time. Like, the two of us were supposed to end up together or something. Although she said the only way she'd forgive me is if we made her the godmother of our future children."

"She deserves that much. Did she say anything about me?"

"Yeah. She said she hopes you're happy, and she'll try very hard to resist the urge to stab you repeatedly."

"Then I'll try very hard to resist the urge to make a pre-emptive strike." He chuckles and pulls her closer.


	6. We Might Fall

She wakes up one morning, deep in the throes of overwhelming nausea, and as she vomits into the toilet, all the pieces finally come together. _No_, is her first horrified thought. _No, not now, not when he's volunteering, oh God please not now_. And this is when she falls away into a dead faint.

She wakes up in her mother's arms, and she has never felt so much like a little girl before.

"It's Cato's, isn't it?" her mother asks gently. She looks up with a start.

"How...what..." Her mother grins wryly, amused at her daughter's naivete.

"I'm a healer, Thyme, and your mother. I know these things."

"You're not upset?" She's always thought that her parents would go ballistic if she ever became a teenage mother.

"...No, not really. To be honest, I'm not even all that surprised. After all those nights you two spent in the training center, something was bound to happen sooner or later. I was just hoping it'd be a little later." The idea that her mother actually _knows _about all the times she's sneaked out at night is not so shocking as the fact that her mother knew and didn't confront her about it.

"Why didn't you stop me, if you knew?"

"Thyme, when have I ever been able to really stop you from doing anything?" She flushes a little in guilt. "Besides, Cato's a good boy. I knew he wouldn't hurt you. And with the...well, with youth being such a fleeting moment in our lives, I thought you two should enjoy the time you had together." She tries to absorb this information. Clearly, she has underestimated her mother's capacity for understanding. Suddenly, a panic-inducing thought hits her.

"Does Daddy know?" she whispers, her voice soft and squeaky, fearing the answer. Her mother chuckles.

"No, Daddy does _not _know. He'd kill Cato and chain you to the house if he found out." She nods in agreement. "You'll have to tell him, you know. Your father. And Cato, while we're at it."

Now she is truly horrified. Her father's anger, she can deal with. But her heart catches in her throat at the idea of telling Cato. Not because she's afraid he won't love the baby. She knows he will. But because he's going off to the Games and there's always the possibility that he won't...

"Why now, Mama? Why now?" Tears roll down her cheeks as she clings to her mother. She curses her stupidity, for forgetting that Cato was volunteering this year, for getting pregnant at the worst time ever, for trying to believe that he was going to come home and everything would be as it was. Her mother strokes her hair and murmurs soothing words in her daughter's ear.

* * *

><p>She can't tell him. She tries, and every time, the words choke up in her mouth. The possibility that he won't be there to see the baby is suffocating. It crosses her mind that she could theoretically get rid of the baby, but as soon as the idea hits her, she is disgusted with herself. She won't throw away the strongest bond that holds her and Cato together. She has helped women get rid of babies before, women that were raped by Peacekeepers, women too poor to care for another baby, but most women in District 2 simply give babies up to the orphanage if they're not wanted. So she decides to keep her baby, hoping that its existence will be enough to bring Cato home.<p>

Clove (she finds it easier to use her name when she's not with Cato anymore) drops by the shop one day. She's preparing a salve when the door swings open, revealing Clove, black braids, freckles, knives and all. Her fingers slowly grip the dagger she's slicing roots with, eyes never leaving Clove.

"Can I help you with something?" Clove says nothing, just casually walks towards the work table, eyes flicking around the shop. Thyme grips the knife tighter, knowing in the back of her mind that if Clove decided to kill her now, she wouldn't stand a chance. Clove takes a bottle of tonic off a shelf, finger tracing the curves of the glass. Thyme goes back to slicing up roots and leaves, watching Clove out of the corner of her eye.

"We used to be friends," Clove murmurs, breaking the silence.

"We did," she concurs. But that was a long time ago, when they were both still so little, and Cato was nothing more than a mutual friend, and they barely knew the Reapings existed. Clove puts the bottle back and leans against the wall.

"What happened?"

Thyme sighs and stops her work, placing the knife onto the wooden table.

"A lot of things. We grew up. We started training. We both decided we wanted Cato. We got old enough to be Reaped. A lot of things, Clove."

"Mostly Cato?"

"Yeah. Mostly Cato." Clove smirks and crosses her arms.

"Stupid Cato." Thyme chuckles wryly. They fall into a lapse of silence again, both girls remembering what it was like to be children and friends.

"Remember when we used to paint ourselves with the elderberry juice?" Thyme blurts out suddenly.

"We got it all over our clothes and everything, and I'd always go home purple-blue." Clove's smirk softens into a smile. "Didn't we get it on the wall, too?" Thyme grins.

"Yeah, we did. Mom saved it. It's still in the kitchen. You wanna see?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do." Thyme leads Clove into the kitchen, where in the corner, on the wall, are the remains of two little girls' artistic endeavors. The vivid violet color has faded into a light lavender. Clove squats down and traces the outlines with her fingers. Flowers and sunshine and two little girls holding hands.

"I wish I was a kid again, sometimes," she murmurs.

"So do I." And does she ever. She wishes she was five again, painting with Clove and teasing Cato without a care in the world, when her biggest fear was the dark instead of getting Reaped, when her biggest worry was whether she would get in trouble or not for painting on the wall instead of wondering how to tell Cato she was pregnant.

Clove stands back up and turns to Thyme. She pulls a knife out of its holster, flips it around, and offers the handle to Thyme. Thyme regards it for a moment, then takes it, swapping it for a razor out of her arm strap. They smile.

* * *

><p>"Cato?" She's sitting between Cato's legs as he sits against a training center wall. The reapings are a month away.<p>

"Yeah?" She pauses, trying to figure out how to phrase her confession.

"You know how Clove wanted us to make her the godmother of our future children?"

"Yeah..." he peers hesitantly at her, suspicion written all over his face.

"Um...that may happen sooner than we initially planned." Cato's face runs through a whole gamut of expressions, from suspicious to shocked to comprehensive to elated.

"You're...you're really...?" His elation is contagious, and she can feel her heart lightening with his exuberant grin.

"Yes, I really am." Cato lets out a victorious whoop of joy, fist pumping into the air. Part of her wants to roll her eyes at what she perceives to be a slight overreaction on his part, and the other half feels like grinning like a loon alongside him. She decides to go for "grinning like a loon."

"How long now?"

"Since our first, um, fight. About...two months now." He nods and slides a hand over her belly protectively. "You know, you can't feel the baby yet."

"I know. I just...I'm gonna be a dad..."

"That...tends to happen when you impregnate someone, Cato." There is a moment of comfortable silence as she slides her hand over his. Then, Cato pulls his hand out from under hers and wraps his arms around her tight.

"I'll come back, Thyme. I have to, now. For you, for the baby. Don't worry. I'll come back. I promise." She chokes back tears (what is up with her and _crying_these days?) and rests her head in the crook of his neck, nestling into his body, as if being physically closer to him could pull him back home.

"Okay, Cato. Okay."


	7. It Ends Tonight

"Daddy...I'm pregnant." She cringes, expecting an outburst of fatherly rage. But there is nothing, simply silence. Her father remains seated on the bed, staring blankly at some point on the floor. Several times, he opens his mouth in an attempt to say something, but all he manages is a weak croaking sound. She fears that she has sent her father into a fit of shock-induced catatonia. Finally, he shows signs of life. He sighs and shakes his head. "Well, I can't say I didn't see this happening...I just thought it'd be a little later." He gives her a hug to show that all is forgiven, if there was anything that needed forgiving, that she is still his little girl, come Hell or high water or...unexpected pregnancy.

* * *

><p>One week. She has one week left, seven days, one hundred sixty-eight hours, ten thousand eighty minutes, six hundred thousand eight hundred seconds. There is not enough time for them. They spend every night in the training center, Cato's arms wrapped tightly around her, her clinging onto him, as if this could prevent him from going to the arena. She can feel his warmth, his solidness, and it's the Spring Equinox Festival all over again. She wonders what she would do if it meant Cato didn't have to leave, if it meant the Reapings stopped and the Games ended for good. She wonders what kind of torture she would be willing to suffer, which people she would be willing to kill, just to end the Games. Not for any noble cause such as <em>justice<em> or _philanthropy_, just for freedom. Her freedom, and Cato's freedom. She will be the first to admit that she is selfish. But she hates the Capitol nonetheless, because the Capitol is more selfish than she is. Were seventy-three Games not enough to punish the Districts? Not for the Capitol. Because for the goddamned Capitol, nothing is ever enough.

He whispers in her ear at night, promises of coming back, of nothing changing, of winning, for her, for the baby, as his fingers tangle themselves in her hair, as she nestles into his chest, burying her face in the crook of his neck, breathing in the warm, musky scent that envelopes her like a blanket. She's learned that at this point, it is more reassuring to tell herself that everything Cato says will come true than it is to try and point out reality. So she listens to Cato's promises, and adds in her own details. They write their own happily-ever-afters.

"We'll get married when I come back, a real wedding, with you in a new wedding gown and everything, a white one and all."

"With twisting vines embroidered into the bodice."

"Yeah, with that. And one of those veil things, a lace one."

"And a cake. I haven't had cake since... since the first day of school."

"Definitely a cake," he concurs. "With frosting all over it, and three layers."

"Four," she murmurs.

"Four, then."

They talk more, argue over whether Clove will be the maid of honor or the best man ("Clove's a _girl_," she says), discuss home decorating (green in the nursery, blues and browns everywhere else), and debate the merits of Thyme's cooking ("Your cooking ends up tasting like medicine," he deadpans), drawing out the most mundane details of married life, until they have written their own fairytale, written their own world. In this world, their children won't get Reaped and Cato will undoubtedly come home.

* * *

><p>They decide it would be wise for Cato to learn about various plants, should there be useful plants in the Arena. So she lays out her family's stock of herbs and plants on the wooden worktable for Cato's instruction. She points first to a bundle of sweet-smelling fernlike leaves.<p>

"That's chervil. Get that into a paste and smear it on an infected wound."

"Chervil. Paste. Infected wound. Got it," Cato nods in understanding.

"And this next one," she picks up a bundle of daisy-like plants, "is feverfew. You eat it. For fevers. Self-explanatory." She runs through a list of plants she thinks will be useful, mostly plants that cure infections, since she imagines that's how Cato would die, from an infected wound after killing off the other tributes. Horsetail, marigold, comfrey root, burdock root. Calendula flowers for burns. Cato repeats the plant name and its function after she introduces each one, trying to memorize everything. "And this last one. Tormentil." She waves a small, yellow, four-petaled flower at Cato. "Chew the root and put it on a wound. Any wound. Just do it. So there." She slams her palm and the flower down on the table, crushing it, as she glares at him, daring him to do something. He grasps her hand pulls her close, gazing down at her with his blue eyes, capable of such cruelty and such kindness. And she knows that he knows what this has been all along. A parting gift. A gift of an extended life. The best she can give at this point. She throws her arms around his shoulders, clutching on to him like a lifeline.

"This won't be the last," he murmurs into her ear.

* * *

><p>One more day.<p>

They're not exactly sure why, but they are in the one place they swore never to go back to. The two gaze into the distance, as the mountain wind whips her hair into a flickering storm. Their fingers clench and curl together as they face their nevers, eyes glowing from the sun setting on the horizon. It does not cloak the sky in violet and trim it with golden lace, not anymore. It burns now, with angry flaming streaks of crimson and scarlet and umber, searing the sky charcoal black, black like the world, black like the Capitol's heart, black like her rage, black like death.

"Still think we're going to go there?" she asks, flatly, voice devoid of emotion.

"No," he replies, defeated, and he grips her hand tighter. It kills her, hearing him so resigned, so hopeless. She knows she shouldn't have asked that, knowing there was no other answer. She can feel it in her veins, a simmering that boils over into a frothing frenzy of pain and hate and fury. It starts in the pit of her stomach, and she feels sick at first, and then suffocated, and then, it comes to life, surging through her and cracking her sternum, and she knows this is what it must feel like, then, heartbreak. Because she can feel her heart turning to stone and dying, a wrenching, throbbing ache, and the heat climbs into her throat, choking her. Today is the last day. He will be gone tomorrow, gone to fight twenty-three others to the death. And as much as she knows he will win, she has the equally sickening knowledge that he won't. Even if he lives, nothing will be the same again. He will be a mentor, and watch more children die, some under his care. The Capitol will take him this year, and when he comes back, they will take him every year after that, and they won't just take him, they will take _him_. No matter what happens, Cato will die.

And thus the hammer struck her stone heart, shattering it to pieces.

And she screams. She can hear it echoing through the mountains, like a wild animal's scream, agonized and blood-curdling. She pours into it her hate, her pain, her anger, and the sound leaves her mouth as twisted and crazed as it felt inside her. It rips her throat raw, but it's nothing compared to the pain inside. She hopes the Capitol can hear this, hopes the scream sinks into their bones as they eat their dinners or prepare for bed, hopes it haunts their nightmares. She runs out of breath and begins gasping for air, and screams again, only this time it is shot through with jagged sobs. Tears stream down her face, burning like they did last time, and she can taste the saltiness as it runs into her mouth. She can feel Cato pressing her face into his chest, and she squeezes her eyes shut, still sobbing. He pulls her in tighter, closer, and she holds on to him. She knows he is crying too; she can feel his tears dripping onto her shoulder, and they are the two of them, crying on the mountain.

* * *

><p><em>Author's note: My apologies for such a long wait! I hit a spot of writer's block, trying to make this chapter perfect, since I really wanted to capture the tragedy of it all. But it's been a success! ...hopefully...<em>


	8. If I Die Young

She stands in line with the other seventeen-year-old girls, with her green linen frock, and a red ribbon in her black-coffee hair. Clove stands next to her, and the two girls exchange a solemn look and a quick squeeze of hands.

"May the odds be ever in your favor," she murmurs.

"Yours, too," Clove whispers back.

She turns to Cato, standing on the other side. He winks at her and she smiles weakly.

When the man from the Capitol rustles in the glass bowl for a female Tribute, she mouths silent pleas for it to not be herself, not be Clove, as she watches his hand swirl dramatically among the slips of names, slips of death sentences. She is overcome with the sudden urge to smash the man's head against the glass bowl and watch him bleed over the slips of paper, shards of glass ornamenting his broken face. When he whips one up and holds it aloft in the air, she holds her breath and her mind screams curses at him, for prolonging their suffering, for perpetuating the torturous grief. She wants him to die, to drop dead, and she wants it all to burn. And it is revealed. _Clove Heathridge_, just like the death sentence it is. Clove squeezes her hand again before heading towards the platform. To anyone else, the look in Clove's eyes would be a steely resolution, but she can see Clove's eyes from the projector screens, and knows it is resignation.

When the man announces it is time to select the male Tribute, Cato shouts that he volunteers, and she really wants to slap him for his idiocy. He strides towards the platform confidently, with a spark in his eyes, and she can't tear her eyes away. The man applauds Cato's bravery (idiocy), and he and Clove are led away into the Justice Building, and all this time, she feels like she's going to throw up.

* * *

><p>She finds Clove first, deciding to save Cato for later because she wants her to be the last thing he sees of home before he leaves. The two girls rush to hug each other, for the first time since they were friends.<p>

"I wish we were friends again sooner," Clove says.

"Same here," she murmurs back.

They separate, and she offers a small smile. Clove smiles back, and they both ignore the tears welling up each other's eyes. They hug each other once more, for the last time.

"Give them hell, Clove," she whispers fiercely.

"I will."

Then she leaves.

* * *

><p>There are no words exchanged when she first sees Cato, just a half-frenzied dash into each other's arms and a desperate clinging-on. Neither of them cry. They shed them all on the mountain. She tries to memorize how it feels to be in his arms: the solid planes of his chest closely pressed against hers, the steadily thudding heartbeat that calms her own, the strength of his arms wrapped tightly around her waist, the warm safeness that came with being enveloped inside his embrace. She buries her face into the crook of his neck and inhales his warm, musky scent, willing that scent to be burned into her memory forever. His fingers are tangling themselves into the ends of her hair again, she can feel them gently tugging at it, and she runs her fingers through his hair, feeling the short, soft blondness ruffle between her fingers like thick velvet. It's the closeness she will miss, this feeling of security. She will miss his smile, the smile that lit up his face and her heart. She will miss his ice-blue eyes, his laugh, the way his fingers tangle themselves into the ends of her hair, his strength, his steady heartbeats, his low, husky voice murmuring into her ear, she will miss it all. She will miss the nights in the training center, the dancing. She will miss him.<p>

And they stand there, locked together in something she hopes even the Capitol cannot separate. This is the last time, she knows. This is the last time anything is ever the same. He'll come home, he won't, he'll live, he'll die, the Capitol will burn to the ground and freeze over into a thousand years' worth of ice, President Snow will be blasted into a million pieces of blood and evil, and this will still be the last time anything is ever the same.

He looks down at her and cups her face, stroking her her cheek with his thumb. His eyes are soft now, more snow than ice, and so tinted with grief and regret in spite of the gentle smile on his face that it hurts her. She reaches up and traces his jawline with her fingers, then the line of his nose, along the shell of his ear, burning the image of his face into her memory, burning everything into her memory. And they kiss, slowly, softly, at first, his lips sliding over hers like a soothing murmur that everything will be alright, like he always tells her. She remembers that she will miss this too, his gentleness, the warm softness of his lips against hers. And then it is deeper, darker, more desperate, it is her plea to never forget, to never give in, to go down fighting, her promise that she will do the same, because they are District 2, and District 2 is as hard as the granite it's carved out from, and they will never bow down to anyone, they are as unyielding as stone and just as cold, and he needs to remember, as will she.

They break apart for air, gasping, both of them on the verge of tears and willing themselves to be strong for the other. He places a hand on her belly, and smiles again, softly.

"Tell the baby how much I love him." He stops her before she can ask how she knows. "It's a boy. Trust me on this one."

"...I will...I love you, Cato."

"I love you too, Thyme."

He kisses her one more time, and before it is over, she takes the ribbon from her hair and pushes it into his palm.

"For luck. Red for victory," she gasps out, choking on tears. His fingers wrap around the ribbon and he nods.

"I promise I'll come home."

And now it is over.

The Peacekeepers lead her out of the room, and she turns to look over her shoulder to see him smiling gently at her, and she manages to give him a small smile back. When the door shuts behind her and the lock clicks, she wants nothing more than to break away from the Peacekeepers and rush back and break the door down and grab Cato's hand and climb over the mountains, and run and run and run into the prairies and hide in the waves of tallgrass, where nobody will find them, and if they die, they'll die together.


	9. Angels Cry

The several hours after Cato's departure are sort of a blur in her memory. She remembers sitting in Cato's kitchen, with her mother and Mrs. Steele, Cato's mother. She remembers the two women holding hands while two rivulets of tears stream silently down Mrs. Steele's stony face. The tension in there is tangible, like swathes of gauze wrapping themselves around her mouth and nose, but she stays for Mrs. Steele, because she's losing a child. She tells herself that whatever she feels, Mrs. Steele is probably feeling tenfold. So she sits in choked silence in the kitchen, staring at her lap, until she feels a hand on her shoulder. She looks up with a start to see Mrs. Steele smiling weakly through her tears.

"You don't have to stay here, Thyme. You can go if you want."

She stammers out words of gratitude and runs out of the house. And she realizes that everything's still the same, it still feels like gauze is wrapped around her face, because everything in District 2 screams Cato, from the training center to the mountain to the town square to the marketplace to the small school to...everywhere. She can feel him everywhere, and he's not even dead yet. She runs to her room and curls up on the floor, feeling the ache behind her sternum crack and burn, because _God _she misses him already, and she hates herself for feeling like such a pathetic wreck. She knows Clove would have been stronger, but she isn't Clove. She holds her stomach, whispering softly to it.

"Daddy will come home, sweetheart. Daddy promised, and he never breaks his promises. He'll come home."

She's not sure if she's reassuring herself or the baby more at this point. Then again, she doesn't really care, as long as one of them believes it.

* * *

><p>The television flickers on of its own accord at nine at night, just as she expected it to. It's the Tribute Parade, and she remembers watching with Cato, poking fun at the other Tributes' costumes. It's different this year, for self-explanatory reasons. She prays that Cato and Clove haven't been shoved into some dignity-compromising outfit, because the least the Capitol could do was grant them some shred of dignity before sending them off to the slaughter. Her parents told her to go to bed, trying to spare their little girl the pain, but she insisted on watching. Call it morbid curiosity, but she had to know what his every living moment looked like before he died. She watches the District 1 tributes ride into the stadium, decked out like Capitol freaks, in <em>hot pink <em>furs and _hot pink_ glittery suits and dresses and...dearest mother of God, was that a _feather headdress_ on the female tribute's head? _In hot pink_? She felt it bubbling in her stomach the entire time she watched them pull in, but that close-up of the feather headdress made her break into semi-sane laughter, because dearest Lord, that headdress was hilarious. _Featherbrain_, she finds herself thinking in Cato's voice, and she laughs even harder. She hasn't laughed this hard in a while, not since Cato's impending departure loomed over them like the mountains' shadows, and the feeling is wonderful, a giddy, heartbreaking, close-brush-with-death sort of feeling, full of adrenaline and cruel glee.

Her laughter dies, though, when Cato and Clove pull in. And she really wants to punch the television. The golden suits of armor are fine. He actually looks handsome in them, and she looks strong. But those helmets, oh, those helmets. With _wings_ on them. _Wings_. Her head is flooded with morbid images of Cato's head flying off his neck, propelled by those god-awful wings. She sort of expects the wings to start flapping any moment now. She is sort of aware that fashion faux pas should be the least of her concerns when Cato and Clove are probably going to die in a few weeks, but honestly. Winged headdresses. Exactly what about a winged headdress made the District 2 stylist think "badass"? She felt like weeping for Cato and Clove's lost dignities. The fact that they managed to stay straight-faced and even fierce in spite of the ridiculous headdress was amazing. She's sure that if she was wearing that thing, she would either be dying of laughter or trying to kill her stylist and everyone else that was watching.

But when District 12 pulls in, she is frozen. The Tributes are on fire. Fire. Burning. Her first reaction is to scream, because dammit, nobody halfway decent deserves to burn to death. Logic, however, takes over, and she notes that neither of them seem to be in any form of pain, and she stares in awe at the flames. She hates them, for looking better than District 2, hates them for having a stylist that didn't seem hellbent on ruining the tributes' dignities, hates them for looking how Cato and Clove should look, deadly and beautiful. She takes a good look at the girl, with her black hair and steel-gray eyes and she knows that it is all over. She knows that look well. It's the look she had in the month before Cato's departure. That's the look of a girl who will pay any cost to win, who would probably trade in her soul if it meant coming home. That's the look of a girl who has, all at once, nothing to lose and everything to lose. She doesn't know who _that girl_ is fighting for (there's another _that girl_ in her life now, great), a lover, a family member, herself, but whoever she's fighting for is pretty fucking important to _that girl_, because she knows _that girl _is going to win, and hopes that some freak Gamemaker accident will finish her off before she gets to Cato. Because if _that girl _gets to Cato, the game is over.

* * *

><p>She prays for Cato that night, praying that he will never run into <em>that girl<em>, because she just knows the end will be bloody and horrific, if her assessment of _that girl_ is correct, and she's pretty sure it is. She holds her belly and rubs it in slow, soft circles, cooing words of reassurance to the baby, because it gives her an excuse to lie to herself.

"When Daddy comes home, sweetheart, we'll paint your room green, like we said we would. And we'll take you the Spring Equinox Festival, and Mommy will tell you how she and Daddy fell in love, and we'll train you. Daddy'll teach you how to use a sword, and Mommy'll teach you how to use razors and needles, and how to heal yourself. And you'll be unstoppable, sweetheart. You'll be safe. And we'll tell you stories about Auntie Clove, and how brave she was, and how strong, and how she and Mommy were best friends, and then worst enemies, and then best friends all over again. And you'll know just how much Mommy and Daddy love you, sweetheart. We love you so, so much. Always remember that. No matter what happens, we love you."

* * *

><p>The interviews are on the next night, and she already wants to shoot the District 1 girl. Glimmer. She wants to grab a Peacekeeper's gun and blast her to high heaven, because <em>Lord<em> she's annoying and if she's going to join the Career pack, she's going to compromise everyone. Mostly Cato and Clove, if one of them don't kill her first. The District 1 boy is lackluster, a nobody, just cocky and pampered like all the District 1 brats. Clove follows, and she smiles victoriously, delighted that Clove will show those District 1 fools what strength looks like. She may appear demure, in her ruffled orange frock, but nobody can fail to see the steel in her smirk, the wicked spark in her eyes that sent all the boys back home running. When she sees the District 1 tributes glaring at Clove, she grins. _Give them hell, Clove_.

When Cato comes up, her breath catches. She has never seen him in a suit before, but he is breathtakingly handsome in his black, sharkskin suit jacket, the sharp, black silk dress shirt, the copper tie, the knife-creased slacks. He holds himself with an air of arrogant superiority, cold and heartless. His eyes are ice again, hard, glinting, and calculating. There is a smirk on his face, mirthless and a shade sadistic, and she knows this is not really Cato. This is a different Cato, one she rarely sees, a fake Cato. The Cato she knows would not speak so freely of slaughter and death. He would not be so flippant about a life. He talks about finishing off the other Tributes with a casual, practiced, detached cruelty, and she knows he's been practicing, because ever since he learned of her pregnancy, Cato's been a lot more leery about killing children, many younger than himself. But that Cato is gone, replaced by a Cato that wouldn't think twice about lopping off a twelve-year-old's head.

This is the other Cato, the one that hurts her so much to watch, because she knows the Games are already taking him. She knows that he does this to protect the ones he loves, puts on a facade of sadistic brutality to secure sponsors and the chance to go home, to hide his pain and save them all, but she knows that Cato is liable to slip and fall into his role much too deeply for anyone to save. Cato is made of extremes, capable of extreme love and extreme cruelty, and she is afraid that these extremes will tear him apart. This is the Cato that everyone else sees, an angel wearing the mask of a demon. But what's the difference, really, when everyone knows that demons are just fallen angels? She watches and decides that she likes him better in black jeans, black work boots, and a white dress shirt.


	10. Going Under

Star-crossed lovers. That is what _that girl_ and the blonde boy are, apparently. The boy...what was his name? Peter? Peeta. That's it. Peeta. He loves her, almost as much as she loves Cato. And he is honorable, she can see. And he is going to die. All the good ones do. He will protect _that girl_ with his life, but _that girl_ won't, because _that girl_ does not love him, doesn't even like him, she thinks. _That girl_ will not let love get in the way of her survival, might not kill him, because they are from the same district, but _that girl_ would barely think twice before killing him if she had to. She feels sorry for him, because if Cato didn't win, she'd want Peeta to win, him or the little girl, Rue. But she knows Peeta would die early, because she knows everyone wants to kill _that girl_, and he would die for her. He is what Cato would have been, she thinks, if Cato didn't have to be a Career: sweet and loving and honest and funny. But Cato had to bury that under layers and layers of cruelty and bravado and ferocity and brutality, because he is a warrior. Why do all the good ones have to die?

* * *

><p>She curls into a ball between her parents as the television flickers on again. Her heart is in her throat, choking the way tears choke, as she prays for Cato and Clove to survive the Cornucopia. She watches the platforms elevate to ground level, all twenty-four Tributes emerging from the ground like they're being born again, as warriors, all of their childhoods stripped away. The camera closes in on Cato's face, and she drinks the image in, taking strength from the steel in his eyes, the arrogant half-smirk. The camera pans to Clove, and she can't help but smile at Clove's feistiness, the snap and spark in her face, and she is reassured for a moment, until they show <em>that girl's <em>face, and it comes falling down all over again. She heard that _that girl_ got an eleven in training, beating Cato by a point, and she hates her, hates her so much for beating Cato, for being the _Girl on Fire_. But fire will never burn stone. Fires burn out. Stone stands forever. This is what she tells herself.

* * *

><p>The camera pans around the Arena, pausing on a bow and a quiver of arrows, a set of knives mounted on the wall of the Cornucopia (for Cato, she knows), a tray of daggers and knives (Clove's, undoubtedly Clove's). When the gong sounds, the Arena explodes into motion. It's mostly a blur of motion and dying things but she manages to keep up with him as he runs to the Cornucopia and grabs the swords like she knew he would. He spins around and runs a girl through without missing a beat, then tosses a dagger over to Clove, who snatches it cleanly out of the air and seamlessly throws it at another Tribute's head. He doesn't even have the time to scream. The District 1 girl (<em>Glimmer<em>) slits another girl's throat with a knife (apparently not as useless as previously thought) and runs to grab the bow and arrows. When _that girl _trips and Clove throws a knife at her, hope wells up in her like blood rising from a wound. It is cut short when _that girl_ lifts her backpack to block the knife, and the hate is back. She wants _that girl_to drop dead.

When the girl lights a small fire that first night, she laughs at her stupidity. The Tribute is practically begging for someone to kill her. But when she begins to beg for life, Thyme's cruel amusement turns to sickening dread, not because of the girl's piteous wails and sobs, but because of Cato. He taunts her, tracing the edge of his knife along her neck and her face and her limbs as he laughs and asks what he should hack off first.

"Should I take your leg off first? Or your arm instead. Or _maybe_...I could take your head off. Let everyone back home see just how stupid you are. How's that sound, guys?" The Career pack cheers and laughs, as the girl continues sobbing for mercy.

"Please don't! Just this once, please! If you catch me again, you can kill me, just not now, please!"

_Kill her_, she pleads silently. _Kill her and make it stop. Make the begging stop. Make the crying stop. Make her stop, Cato, please_.Cato keeps laughing, cold and mirthless, and Thyme's heart breaks a little more. She catches a shadow cross Clove's face even as she laughs with the rest of them, a spark of something familiar in her eyes, and she cuts the girl's pleading short with a knife to the chest, much to Thyme's relief. She spends the rest of the night thanking Clove and praying for Cato. She is losing him faster than she thought possible.

* * *

><p>There are eleven dead that first night, and she is grateful that none of them are Cato or Clove.<p>

* * *

><p>The next night is worse. There is fire, fire everywhere. She thinks it deliciously ironic, and hopes that the fire kills <em>that girl<em>, because how fitting would it be for the Girl on Fire to be...on fire? But the fire is everywhere, advancing on all the tributes in an unholy wall, and it doesn't just burn, it _flies_, in flaming orbs of death that crash down from the sky, and she watches in horror, willing herself not to scream, as Cato and Clove duck and run. Everything explodes into flame, like the sky that last night on the mountain, and she struggles to see them through the smoke. she can see their eyes, though, Cato's ice-blue and Clove's obsidian-black, wide with terror, but they don't scream. They make a mad dash through the rocks and the trees, and he grips onto her hand the entire time like a lifeline as he half-guides, half-drags her along, stumbling on rocks and roots. Thyme is grateful that he has not forgotten Clove, has not forgotten everything.

The camera cuts to _that girl_, and she grins with a wicked glee when _that girl_ is grazed by a fireball, and half-curses that it did not burn all of her. When _that girl _screams in pain, the healer in her immediately runs through a list of herbs and treatments that would help her. _Cool water, not cold. Poultice of calendula blossoms, to be replaced every half hour. Bind lightly with soft gauze to prevent abrasion_. The District 2 in her laughs at _that girl's_ pain, wants _that girl_ to hurt more, to hurt as much outside as she hurts on the inside, wants her to burn and crack and die. She knows this is wrong, _that girl_ is just much an innocent as Cato and Clove. _That girl_ volunteered to save her own little sister, after all, a noble, self-sacrificing cause. If it was anyone else, she would have respected them, admired them, perhaps even applauded them. But it had to be _this girl_, a girl who is just as deadly as Clove, a girl who could kill Cato, so she wants her dead, dead, dead, buries her guilt under righteous, heart-broken fury, and watches on in cold amusement, a small smirk painted on her face. She doesn't see her mother watching quietly from the doorway, her heart breaking for a daughter growing up too fast in all the wrong ways.


	11. Stay With Me

_Author's note: My apologies for the super-long wait! There were AP exams and graduation trip and then grad exams...(sighs). But it's all over now!_

* * *

><p>When the baby kicks for the first time, Thyme breaks down into tears again, District 2 stone be damned. She blames it on the hormones, because stone doesn't cry. <em>But it's not supposed to be like this...Cato's supposed to be here, and he's supposed to be able to feel the baby too, he's not supposed to be fighting for his life, Clove's supposed to make fun of Cato for being such a sentimental mess, and...and...<em>and everything's supposed to be different, but nothing is. Correction. Several things are different, in all the wrong ways. She and her family already didn't rank too highly in District 2, being healers instead of Careers, never mind the fact that her mother's knowledge of poisons could render the entire district's water undrinkable, the food inedible, never mind the fact that her father was the one who taught Clove how to throw knives. But now, almost everyone in District 2 sees her as a disgrace. She gave up being a Career for a life as a healer, despite being of Tribute age. She will never bring honor to the district. And now she's pregnant, unable to volunteer at all, despite having one year left. She can feel the glances they shoot at her, glances of disappointment and scorn, knowing the only reason that she isn't a complete social pariah is because everyone knows that the child is Cato's, and Cato's presence in any way, shape, or form commands some measure of respect.

* * *

><p>Or not. No, apparently the fact that the child inside her is Cato's doesn't matter to the town gossips, mainly older women with Victor children, who think themselves the mothers of gods, a race above the "common folk".<p>

"I suppose I can't say that she's stupid. Stole Cato from right under Clove's nose, how she did it I'll never know. Anyone in their right mind would pick Clove over that Thyme girl," she hears one woman declare to another at the market.

"Well, she's pretty, isn't she?" her companion ventures. "Tall, and she's got that beautiful hair. And her complexion..." She remembers this woman. Kinder than the others. Always polite to her and her parents, albeit a little distant at times. The first woman snorts.

"And what use is pretty? Pretty doesn't kill someone. Pretty doesn't make you win the Games. Pretty's just pretty. District 2's had 31 Victors, and none of them were pretty. And she's got herself knocked up, so he'll have to stay with her now, won't he? She's a slutty little coward, but you can't say she's stupid."

She can feel her body go cold. She never burns. She freezes with fury in her veins and closes her eyes and whispers to herself that they know nothing. _They do not know how much Cato loves me. They do not know how much I love Cato. They do not know anything. They do not know anything._

* * *

><p>That night, the Games air again, and again, she is watching. The fire is gone, thank God, and they've chased <em>that girl <em>up a tree. She sees that the blonde boy is with Cato and the other Careers. She doesn't want to see it. She doesn't want to know that everything she believed of him was wrong. She saw love in his eyes on the night of the interviews. True, genuine love. She wonders if he's gone crazy the way Cato's going crazy, the way Clove's slowly, slowly but steadily slipping. But he can't go, he can't, because this is how she remembers Cato. This is how she remembers who he used to be, because the Cato in the Games is a twisted imitation, sick and bloodthirsty with absolutely no regard for human life. The blonde boy is how he used to be. He can't go the way Cato's gone. He is what brings back memories of the real Cato, the Cato that laughed, really laughed.

They try to get _that girl_, who is taunting them and she wants to throw her blades at _that girl_'s face and shut her up forever. Cato rises to her taunts (_stupid, stupid Cato_) and begins to climb a tree obviously too slender to hold his weight. He pays no attention to the cracking branches and keeps going up, up, up (_if he dies falling off the tree, there'll be hell to pay_), and, lo and behold, a branch finally snaps and they go down together, Cato and the branch. She loves Cato, she does, but sometimes, his sheer idiocy makes her want to smack him. Glimmer tries next, but stops before she goes up too far, because somehow it registers in that sparkly bubble-brain of hers that the branches obviously won't hold her weight. She tries shooting _that girl _instead and misses horribly. For once, both she and _that girl_ find the same thing amusing, Glimmer's almost non-existent brain capacity, and for a moment, she wonders if she and _that girl _could've been friends if they all lived in the same District, in another world where there were no Games. She wonders how much would be different if there were no Games.

The blonde boy suggests that they leave _that girl_ alone until the next day, and she breathes a sigh of relief, because she knows a bluff when she sees one, and his harsh tone carries a hint of pained desperation. He still loves _that girl_. And not all is lost, then. Some things are still alright.

* * *

><p>She's working in the Training Center's emergency room, cleaning up her work station after setting a fractured rib, when a little girl, about four or five, shyly steps into the room, cautiously making her way to Thyme. She recognizes the little girl, Andrea, having helped with her delivery.<p>

"Hello, Andy. Do you need something?" Thyme smiles down at her as she winds up the leftover gauze from binding her previous patient's rib into place. Andrea says nothing, simply continues staring up at her. She goes back to work, putting away wound-up bandages, screwing the lids back on ointment jars and putting them back on the shelves as Andy watches.

"Is it really Cato's?" Andrea blurts out, with all the candor of a child. "The baby. Is it really Cato's?" Thyme wipes down the stainless steel work table, not really knowing where this is all leading and not really sure if she wants to know.

"Yes, it's Cato's." Andrea nods, as though satisfied, before another thought grabs hold of her.

"Do you love him?"

"Yes. I love him."

"A lot?" Thyme hoists Andrea up so she's sitting on the table, and sits down beside her.

"A lot."

"How much?" Thyme sighs a little, wondering how much this will hurt.

"A lot. It's hard to say, Andrea. It's sort of like...like he's half of me. Part of who I am." Andrea looks up, eyebrows furrowed as she tries to grasp this abstract concept, far beyond the imagining of a five-year-old. Thyme turns around and takes an empty jar into her hands. She opens the jar and holds the two pieces apart.

"This is me." She lifts the glass jar. "And this is Cato." She lifts the steel lid. "But the jar isn't whole until..." - she screws the lid back onto the jar - "this happens." Andrea nods slowly as comprehension dawns on her.

"So...you and Cato aren't...complete...without each other?"

"That's right, Andy." Andrea pauses for a moment, waiting for this to sink in.

"Are you complete right now?" Thyme could cry right now, just break down and cry.

"No, Andy."

"Because Cato's gone?" Cato is not, cannot be gone. No, never, not ever. He will never be gone.

"Cato's not gone, sweetheart. He's...just not here right now." There are a few minutes of silence as Andrea stares into her lap and swings her legs slowly and Thyme absentmindedly bunches the hem of her skirt into her fist. Suddenly, Andrea wraps her arms around Thyme's waist, nestling into her side. Thyme starts a little in surprise, then slowly lays an arm protectively around the little girl.

"I want to be just like you when I grow up." Thyme laughs a little, ruefully.

"No you don't, Andy. Why would you want to be like me?"

"You're brave. Not like Mommy." And Andrea's mother was not brave, hadn't been since her husband died two years ago in a masonry accident. She was a shell now, caring for Andrea in a mechanical fashion, never showing any emotion besides an overwhelming grief that washed over everything else. Thyme wondered if she'd be like that when Cato died.

"Your Mommy had to go through a lot, Andy. She loved your Daddy as much as I love Cato. It's not easy to lose someone you loved so much. And some people just aren't ready to deal with it. Nobody knew your Daddy was going to die." Andrea is sniffling by this point, clutching to Thyme even more tightly.

"But I loved Daddy, too! I loved him a lot, as much as Mommy did. And I didn't know he was going to die either! But I'm not the way Mommy is now."

Thyme strokes Andrea's hair soothingly with one hand, holding her close with the other.

"That's because you're brave, Andy. You're already brave. You don't need to be like me. You just have to be yourself, and you'll be brave."

"Why did Daddy have to die, Thyme? Why?" Andrea sobs into Thyme's dress, burying her face into her side as Thyme holds the little girl who lost too much too soon tight in her arms. She keeps stroking Andrea's hair, and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

"I don't know, Andy. I don't know."

_Why, indeed._ Why was Andrea's father dead? Why was her mother a shell of the bright, vibrant woman she used to be? Why was Cato gone? Why was Clove gone? Why was Cato slipping away? Why was everything falling apart? _The Capitol, Andy. It's because of the Capitol_. But she won't tell Andrea that.


	12. Always Running Out of Time

_Author's note: Sorry for the delay! Graduated, so there was a bunch of stuff to do with friends, and then I got sick right after. Bleh. Enjoy!_

* * *

><p>Tracker jackers are the latest thing to go on the <em>List of Things that I, Thyme Rivers, Hate<em>. There are very few of them in District 2, a few nests scattered here and there in the mountains around the area, never a problem. She has seen the effects of a sting once, just once before, but she was small, and she remembers very little besides a young man spouting nonsense before her parents sedated him and drew out the poison. But now she knows to hate them. _That girl _dropped the nest on them (not before she got stung herself, Thyme notes with some satisfaction), causing them all to run, while the District 1 and 4 girls died. The camera closes in on Glimmer's body, ugly and disgusting, her face completely ruined by swollen, pus-oozing lumps, a sacrilege against nature, and for a moment, she feels sorry for Glimmer. The Capitol couldn't even let her die keeping her one redeeming feature, her beauty. They took everything.

* * *

><p>When the nest drops, Clove is the first to wake, her screams mingling with Thyme's shriek of horror. In quick succession, they all wake, but Cato is the first to get his senses together. He grabs Clove's hand and half-runs, half-drags her away from the trees. <em>Cato isn't gone. He's just not here right now<em>. She watches _that girl_ pry the arrows from Glimmer's dead hands, hands that are going stiff with rigor mortis and swollen stings. She can see the short, abrupt jerks that show Glimmer's snapping fingers, and she can feel her stomach turn, her eye twitching with each snap. She silently lauds _that girl_'s sheer nerve and endurance, despite the several stings she has received, stings that have already swollen to the size of plums.

Then the blonde boy comes crashing through the bushes, screaming at _that girl _to run, run, _run_, what is she still _doing_ here? _That girl_ does as she's told and runs off into the forest, moments before Cato comes charging after the blonde boy, wielding a sword. _Don't kill him, Cato, please don't kill him_. If Cato kills the blonde boy, the entire game is over. But he swings the sword at the blonde boy (_Peeta_, something whispers in her mind) and she chokes out a gasp. Peeta has no weapons, nothing to defend himself with, and he's clearly smaller than Cato. He tries to run, but it's useless. Cato's been training for this since he was five, and even in the midst of oncoming insanity and near-misses with tracker jackers, his speed and sheer bulk quickly overwhelm Peeta. He launches himself at the boy and slams him to the ground. A wild scuffle...no, scuffle is too weak a word...melee...ensues. Peeta holds up surprisingly well, she thinks, considering his complete and utter lack of weapons. But his strength makes up for it, a strength that almost equals Cato's, much to her surprise. _This boy's just full of surprises, isn't he? _she thinks, and begins to get the eerie feeling that she's watching two Catos fight, the Cato that used to be and the Cato that is now. She doesn't really know who she wants to win at this point, she only feels a combination of horror and overwhelming sadness and terror and drunken confusion.

* * *

><p>Actually, she feels like the time she and Cato shared an entire stolen bottle of white liquor when they were eight, each daring the other to finish half. By the time the bottle was empty, both of them were horribly tipsy, leaning on each other to climb up the rickety basement stairs. The next dozen or so hours are somewhat unclear, but she remembers waking up with a pounding headache and vomiting copiously into the toilet. There were a few horribly terrifying hours as she tried to piece together what had happened between climbing out of the basement and waking up, and she feels like that now, a psychedelic mess of emotions that can't be cleanly picked apart.<p>

* * *

><p>When Cato lays a long, deep gash along Peeta's leg, she screams. <em>Not the femoral artery, please not the femoral artery<em>, she pleads, and when the blood doesn't pour out in huge gushes, she breathes a sigh of relief. He's in bad shape though, and she can see hints of white bone peeking out from between the gore, a white sliver against red. Cato sneers at Peeta as the wounded boy clutches his leg in agony.

"Not so strong now, are we, Lover Boy? Did you really think you could get away? You're not the only one with something to lose."

And he leaves, without a second glance to the dying boy. _He remembers_, she thinks.

* * *

><p>"Take this to Mrs. Paxton will you?" Thyme suspiciously eyes the satchel her mother is holding out to her.<p>

"Mrs. Paxton? You mean...Julius Paxton's wife?" Her mother shoots her a look that only a weary mother could give.

"_Yes_, Julius Paxton's wife. Who lives in Victors' Village. Do we know any other Mrs. Paxton?"

"Just making sure..." Thyme takes the satchel. "What's in this, anyways?" Her mother waves a hand dismissively at her.

"Medicine for her joints. Now go."

"_Yes, ma'am_." Her mother laughs.

* * *

><p>The walk to Victors' Village is about five inches short of hell. She remembers reading <em>The Scarlet Letter <em>back when she still had to go to school, and she wonders if this is what that woman...whatever her name was...felt, with the eyes of the entire village burning into her with varying degrees of scorn and the occasional glance of pity. She walks up to Mrs. Maria Paxton's house and knocks tentatively on the door.

"Hello? It's Thyme Rivers."

The door swings open to reveal an austere, middle-aged woman, with sharp grey eyes and graying dark brown hair wound tightly into a bun.

"Well, what is it?" Thyme blinks and holds out the satchel.

"My mother told me to give this to you. It's medicine."

Mrs. Paxton eyes her for a moment before taking the satchel off her hands. She can feel the entire eyes of the Village aimed straight at her as they try to scrutinize her reason for entering the sacred circle, watching her as Mrs. Paxton looks into the bag. And apparently the older woman can sense the prying eyes boring into Thyme, because she looks up and barks, "What are you all looking at? Mind your own business!" And gradually, but rapidly, they turn back to their own lives. "Let's go inside, away from these nosy idiots." She stands to the side to let Thyme enter, and before she walks in, she shoots the older woman a glance of relieved appreciation, and Mrs. Paxton silently nods once in acknowledgment.

She's led into the kitchen, where Mrs. Paxton motions for her to sit, which she does so, tentatively, not entirely sure what the wife of a Victor wants with her. She watches the older woman move around the kitchen in precise, methodical movements as she makes what Thyme assumes is tea, judging from the crinkling of dry vegetation. And she's proven right when, moments later, Mrs. Paxton sets down two mugs of cold tea and sits across from Thyme.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."  
>She sips the tea, relishing the cool feeling spreading through her, and briefly wonders, in a completely unrelated thought, if the next time she entered a house in Victors' Village would be because she now lived in it.<p>

"How far along is it? The baby." Thyme jolts out of her contemplation and looks up, somewhat startled that the older woman would deign to initiate conversation with her.

"Um, almost four months now..." She trails off tentatively, not knowing where this is all going.

"I see." They fall back into silence again. "I was in your position before, you know." Thyme looks up with a start.

"Um...excuse me, Mrs. Paxton?"

"I was young once, too. Yes, young and every bit as much in love with Julius as you are with Cato." Her lips quirk up into the tiniest smile at Thyme's spellbound expression. "I never did get around to telling him how I felt until about half a year before the Reapings. I didn't see the point. I thought that one of us would die, most likely Julius, since he was preparing to volunteer, and I didn't want to have to face that reality. So I never told him, until much later."

"Why'd you decide to tell him?" Mrs. Paxton sighs and stirs her tea slowly.

"There were only six months left, and I had nothing to lose. If he didn't love me back, then that was that, and I'd lose nothing. If he did, then we'd have a wonderful six months together, at least. And I was so confident that he'd win. He was strong, and level-headed, and...I just didn't see him losing. So I told him. And the rest is history."

"How did you deal with him being gone?"

"Oh, it wasn't easy. You know it's not easy. I was furious at him for volunteering, even though I knew he had to. For the District and all. And I forced myself to watch the broadcast every night, because not knowing how he was was worse than knowing, even if knowing was terrible. But I always felt that he'd win. I don't know what gave me the audacity to feel that way, but I never doubted him."

Thyme looks down guiltily. She always doubted Cato, ever since they broadcasted the interviews. She hopes her lack of faith hasn't diminished Cato's chance of winning. If Mrs. Paxton never lost faith in Julius, and Julius came home, then Cato...  
>Thyme suddenly feels Mrs. Paxton's hand covering her own in a warm, maternal way, and looks up, shocked, into the older woman's smiling face.<p>

"Cato's a different kind of young man. He's not like Julius. He's more fiery, more reckless. So you're not wrong to have doubts. You've been a brave girl, Thyme. Braver than I would've been if I were you. I didn't have a baby on the way, and there was a lot less competition that year. My best friend wasn't in the Games with Julius. And there were no girls on fire. So keep being brave. And you can tell those idiots that they can, if I may indulge myself in a bit of crude language, go screw themselves. Is that how you young people say it these days?"

Thyme burst out laughing for the first time since Cato left. Never, in her seventeen years, did she imagine severe, I-take-no-bullshit Mrs. Maria Paxton to tell anyone to go screw themselves.

"Yes, that's how we say it." Mrs. Paxton gives a self-satisfied smirk.

"Good. Tell them to go do exactly that. You're braver than all the rest of them put together, and stronger. You'll make it."

* * *

><p>They talk more, chatting, about Julius's secretly sentimental side, about Cato's hyperactive reaction when he found out when he was going to be a father, about little Andrea. When Thyme leaves, she looks at the sky and realizes that she's spent a good two or three hours at Mrs. Paxton's house. She waves goodbye and feels strangely relieved, and the idea that her mother may have sent her to Mrs. Paxton on purpose lingers in the back of her head.<p> 


	13. Thinking of You

_Author's note: I know this is like, two weeks late. And woefully short. Please forgive me. I've biked like 250 kilometers in searing Taiwanese summer sun. My brain still hasn't quite recovered. I swear, the next chapter will be much more timely and lengthy. _

* * *

><p>"Tell me about Cato, please?" Andrea sits at the Rivers's kitchen table, feet swinging, watching Thyme wash the dishes. She'd been dragged over for the night by Thyme's mother after she found Andrea's mother passed out and drunk. Thyme curses Andrea's penchant for asking awkward questions.<p>

"What do you want to know, Andy?"

"How'd you fall in love with him?" Thyme pauses from her work, hand frozen in mid-scrub, and shoots an exasperated, are-you-serious look at Andrea, who blinks innocently. Thyme sighs.

"I was twelve. Both of us were. It was the Spring Festival." Her hands work automatically, scrubbing plates and utensils and pans and pots of their own accord. "When we were smaller, we only danced to the fast songs. The slow songs were 'just for grown-ups'."

"That's silly," Andrea cuts in. Thyme nods slowly.

"It _was _silly. Anyways, that year, Cato decided to ask me to dance."

"How'd he ask you?"

"I was getting to that, Andy."

"Sorry."

"It's okay. The song had just started, and I was going to go wait it out on a bench, like I always had. So I turned, when somebody grabbed my arm. I spun around, fully prepared to punch the bastard in the face, but there he was."

"It was Cato?"

"Yup. It was Cato, trying to look like he didn't care, even though he was blushing all the way up to the tips of his ears." Andrea giggles and Thyme grins, a little ruefully. She rinses the last dish, wipes her hands off, and sits down at the table with Andrea, eyes gazing into a memory five years old. "He just stood there, staring at me, eyes cold as ice, and I stared right back. I didn't know what else to do. Up until then, we'd always been just friends. Close friends, but still. Just friends. Or maybe we were more, we just didn't know it. Either way, there we were, neither of us moving a muscle, waiting to see what the other person would do." Andrea listened, entirely spellbound. "And then he said it. 'Dance with me.' No 'please,' nothing. It wasn't even a question. Like that was all he needed to say to get me to say yes."

She holds her face in her hands and closes her eyes, but tears well up in her eyes in spite of that and she remembers it like it was yesterday. She was twelve, in a light green linen dress, and all spindly arms and legs that the rest of her hadn't grown into yet. He was twelve too, already half a head taller than her, even back then, in worn grey-black jeans and a white shirt and...and oh, God, black work boots. She hates the world for writing her life out in cruel ironies. She remembers being terrified, her heart beating like a jackhammer as Cato stared at her with an intensity she had never seen directed at her before. There was something unfamiliar in his eyes, and she couldn't quite place it, couldn't pinpoint what it was, and it unsettled her. Like he was daring her to say no, and for a moment, she really considered saying it, really considered rejecting him, just to see what he would do, wondering if he would hit her, if he would let go of her arm and just let her go, if he would yell at her. Andy's voice jolts her back into the present.

"And?" Thyme sighs and lifts her head.

"And he was right. I said okay. And...that's how it all started, I guess. I don't know, maybe twelve was too young, and I didn't fall in love with him later, but...I don't know." Andrea nods, then slides off her chair to give Thyme a hug.

"Thanks for the story, Thyme." Thyme smile softly and hugs the little girl back.

"No problem, Andy. You should go to bed now. It's late."

"Okay. Good night, Thyme." Andrea pats Thyme's belly. "Good night, baby!"

"Good night, Andrea." Andrea runs off, and Thyme stays behind at the kitchen table, alone. She rests her forehead against the table and holds her stomach, playing out the rest of the memory.

_Okay, she whispers, okay, and he pulls her in, his hands settling hesitantly around her waist, fingers slowly locking themselves against the small of her back. She lifts her arms up and carefully, almost gingerly, sets them around his shoulders, her own fingers slowly locking behind his neck. The two of them stand like that for a moment, unsure of what to do next, before Thyme, spurred by the music and the movements of the couples around her, begins swaying, ever so slightly, from side to side, and Cato follows suit. What are we doing, he whispers in her ear, and she giggles. I have no idea, she whispers back, and he grins. There are so many things she hadn't noticed about him before, and she has no idea why she hasn't. Things like how blue his eyes really are, like fresh spring ice, how solid he feels, even at twelve, things like his scent, warm and blanketing and strong and calming all at once, the way his hair lay in soft spikes, how right this all felt. They keep dancing, both of them more relaxed now, and somehow, she finds the confidence to lean her head against his shoulder, slowly, slowly, slowly, until she makes contact. She pauses for a bit, anticipating Cato's reaction, but he doesn't seem to mind, just pulls her even closer to him, and she relaxes against him, feels safe in his arms, like nothing could go wrong, and, as cheesy as it sounds, this is where she belongs. This is who she belongs with. Cato Steele. Cato Steele and Thyme Rivers._

_After God knows how long, the song ends (much too quickly, in her opinion), and they separate. He stares down at her, eyes softer now, and she looks up at him, wondering what happens next. And out of nowhere, he kisses her. Softly, on the cheek. He pulls back suddenly, shocked at what he's done. She freezes. They back away slowly from each other, and they both turn in opposite directions and run._

She finds it ironic that the day after she fell in love with her best friend, she lost her other best friend. Clove confronted her the next day at school, saying that she saw what happened between Thyme and Cato, that what she did was entirely unforgivable, she _knew_ Clove liked him, and how could her best friend just steal him when she wasn't looking? Thyme pleaded with Clove, said she didn't steal Cato, he asked her, not the other way around. Then things just happened. None of it was on purpose. She was so sorry, and if it was any consolation, she ran after he kissed her. That was when Clove dropped any intention of forgiving Thyme. He _kissed_her? Why didn't she turn away? Why didn't she hit him? Or better yet, why didn't she just reject him when he asked? She was a bitch, a back-stabbing bitch, and if this was going to be the way things went, then she could consider their friendship over. So it was. And she spent the next five years loving Cato from a distance that was so close yet so far away, and thinking about what would've happened if she said no. Either way, she would've lost someone.

She hates it all, hates how the moment she fell in love was just like the moment everything all started going downhill. She hates that Cato isn't here, hates that she can't be there for Cato, hates herself for not being stronger, hates Cato for volunteering, hates President Snow, hates Clove for breaking up their friendship over a boy, hates District 13 for abandoning all the other Districts during the Rebellion, hates the Capitol, hates President Snow, hates the Capitol most of all. But the hate covers up a gaping hole in her, and she knows. When the waves of rage pass, she's just left with a hollow sadness, a feeling as worn as a rock tumbled in an avalanche.

"I miss you, Cato," she whispers to a sleeping house. "I miss you so much."


	14. Fall to Pieces

_Author's Note: Here it is! Also, a bit of a warning: I'll be moving out for college in a week, from Taiwan to southern California, so I'll be busy packing and arranging all the necessary stuff for the next month and a half. Extremely high chance that I won't update during that time. Sorry!_

* * *

><p>It's all <em>that girl<em>'s fault. It's _her_ fault the food is gone, it's _her _ fault the little Rue girl is dead, it's _her _fault that Cato broke a boy's neck. Surprisingly, besides sparks of intense hate, she feels nothing. Or very little. She watches the food stores explode with a stony face. She winces when Cato snaps the boy's neck, but acknowledges it as almost a necessity. The boy is useless now. Better a quick death with a broken neck. She does cry, though, when the Rue girl dies. A few tears run down her face, and later that night, she hugs Andrea especially tight before she tucks the little girl in for bed. She wonders why _that girl_ bothered with the flowers when it would've been enough to pull out the spear after Rue was gone. _That girl_ could've used the weapon herself. Rue's death wouldn't have been entirely for nothing. Then she remembers that _that girl_ has a little sister. Primrose Everdeen, she thinks. Yes, that was it. She guesses that Rue reminded _that girl _of her own sister, the way Rue reminded her of Andrea.

* * *

><p>She hears Claudius Templesmith announce a change in the rules, the first time the Games have changed in seventy-four years, as far as she knows. Two Tributes can win, this year, if they are from the same District. For a brief, fleeting moment, there is the hope that both Cato and Clove will come home. Then she realizes that that won't happen. One of them will die. Or both. Most likely both. This is for the star-crossed couple, she knows. For Peeta with the infected, wrecked leg and <em>that girl<em> with her wonderfully-convincing theatrics. She hopes they're theatrics, at least, because she can't bring herself to believe that _that girl _is really so deeply in love with Peeta after not even knowing he existed until he was Reaped with her. That means that _that girl_ has more of a heart than she is comfortable with.

* * *

><p>She watches Cato lose himself. She watches his eyes go cold and hollow. She takes back everything she used to think about Cato's eyes being like ice. Those eyes are nothing compared to his eyes now. They used to be more like ice-cold water, piercing and deadly and bone-chilling, but still warm enough to be liquid, still warm enough to be alive. His eyes now are an entirely different story. They look brittle, like spring ice, like he's liable to shatter and break into a thousand pieces of melting glass at any given moment, and he is. He doesn't speak much, and when he does, he snarls, as if the words are ripping themselves out from his lips. He doesn't sleep much, either. She can tell by the dark smudges under his eyes, his wide, haunted, <em>hunted<em> gaze. He stares into the fire at night instead, orange flames flickering against the blue of his eyes, washing them out into a flat grey color. She wonders what he's thinking when he does that, wonders if he sees _that girl _coming for him, if he sees his death, if he sees his last District 2 sunset before he left.

Clove is breaking, too. She can tell from the way Clove talks about the terrible, gruesome things she will do to _that girl _when she finds her, the way Clove's eyes are always darting around, flinching at nothing, muttering threats and pleas in her sleep as she twitches and tosses and turns. But where Cato shatters, Clove cracks.

* * *

><p>He thinks of her, nothing but her, sees her everywhere, and she's the reason he can't sleep. When he tries, he sees terrible, horrifying things. There is Thyme, beautiful and strong, as always, but she is holding someone's hand, a male hand, not his. She stands there with tears in her eyes as the wind whips her hair around her face.<p>

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry. I just couldn't wait any longer. I...told you not to volunteer. I didn't know if you would come back. I'm...I'm sorry, Cato." The boy...man...standing next to her smirks victoriously at him. Cato tries to place the intruder's face. Tall, leanly muscled, grey eyes, black hair (_that's supposed to be _me). He has no idea who this vile monster is. Not sure if he wants to know.

"Come on, sweetheart. Let's go." The boy pulls Thyme away, and she turns to look at Cato one last time, mouthing that she's sorry. The boy pulls her closer, circles an arm around her waist (_that's supposed to be _my_ arm around her waist_), holds her chin in his hand and turns her face to his (_that was _my_ hand_) and kisses her, full on the mouth, and she doesn't turn away. The blood roars in his ears as rage courses through him.

"Thyme!" he shouts. "_THYME!_" She doesn't turn back. There is nothing else to do.

* * *

><p>There is Thyme again, running, running, running, with a baby in her arms as he leads them on in the prairie. She keeps looking behind her shoulder, so he turns his head, and sees the Peacekeepers chasing them down.<p>

"_Keep running!_" he shouts. "_Keep running, I'll hold them back!_" She nods, eyes wild with terror. The baby's wailing in her arms, but neither Cato nor Thyme have the wherewithal to soothe him. Cato turns to fight off the Peacekeepers when he hears two thundering cracks and a terrible, agonized scream. He turns back around just in time to see two dark stains blossoming across Thyme's back, as she arches backwards in pain and shock, still screaming, the baby still wailing. He breaks the neck of the Peacekeeper who shot her. There is nothing else to do.

* * *

><p>It's always Thyme, gone in some way. He sees her dead on the ground, blood trickling out of her mouth, forest-green eyes now flat and glassy, seeing nothing. Her limbs are splayed awkwardly, like an unwanted doll discarded on the ground, as if she fell while running, as if she were kicked after she fell. He bends down to hold her, cradles her broken body to his. She isn't cold, isn't warm either, she feels like cloth, like a rag doll, with no warmth, no coldness, nothing at all. He holds her, brushes out the tangles in her hair with his fingers, and he cries. There is nothing else to do.<p>

* * *

><p>"<em>I hate you!<em>" she screams at him. "_Why did you volunteer? Why did you leave me behind? Why did you go? I hate you! You only care about your honor, and your pride, and the District. What about me? What about the baby? What about _us_?!_" She slaps him, and it stings, but the thought of her hating him, the fact that she raised a hand against him in anger (again) hurts more than the actual slap itself. "_I HATE YOU!_" she screams, once more, for the last time, then turns around and storms away.

"I hate myself, too," he whispers to her retreating figure.

* * *

><p>She is crying as she faces an elongated box, a coffin, he realizes with a start. He is at a funeral now. Thyme is there, obviously, with her parents. His mother is there. Clove's parents are there. He wonders if this is Clove's funeral. He walks to her, wraps his arms around her shoulders, but she doesn't respond. He looks down. This is <em>his<em> funeral. No, _no_, this is _not_ his funeral. This can't be, because he's standing right here, holding Thyme..._who doesn't even seem to know he's here_.

"Shh, Thyme, don't cry," he whispers into her ear. "I'm not dead. I'm right here. This is just a bad dream, Thyme, wake up. I'm right here." She doesn't do anything, doesn't stop crying, doesn't turn around. She keeps holding dead-Cato's hand, keeps sobbing.

"Thyme! Thyme! I'm right here! Thyme, stop crying, please. I'm not gone. I'm not dead. I'm right here." She does nothing. "Thyme! Thyme..." There is nothing left to do.

* * *

><p>She is gone and never coming back. He is gone and never coming back. Everything ends with him never being able to see Thyme again. So stays awake and stares at the fire. There is nothing left to do.<p> 


	15. Keep Holding On

Her world may be slowly falling apart, but for the rest of District 2, life goes on as usual. Colicky babies are given miniscule doses of valerian extract to help them sleep and give their throats and lungs a rest. Broken bones are set with splints and are occasionally snapped back into place amidst the patients' unholy screams. Wounds are stitched, Andrea's homework is completed, deliveries are made, surgeries are performed, and prayers are whispered. If she buries herself far enough in her work, she can forget that Cato is not around, almost. The pain is dulled, reduced to a quiet throb instead of the cracking ache it usually is. She keeps her hands busy, helps her parents attended to the ill and injured of District 2. She knows she promised Cato that she would be as unyielding as stone and just as cold. To stop working, to stop living and carrying on, would be to give up, and to give up would be to bow down to the Capitol, and she promised she wouldn't do that, either.

She doesn't have the luxury of moping and sulking. Even if she hadn't promised Cato that she would stay strong, she simply doesn't have the time. There are miners to tend to, miners with shrapnel embedded in their chests from an explosion gone wrong, miners with crushed legs, miners with sprained wrists and strained eyes and hacking lungs. Not to mention the fact that she still has to help Andrea figure out her math homework later after dinner, and since her mother is staying overnight to help a woman deliver a baby, Thyme will be in charge of dinner and dishes and nighttime chores, again, which means scrubbing down the kitchen and tucking Andrea in and making sure all the herbs and tinctures and instruments are in proper order and...and as she polishes the tools one last time, she plunges a knife into the wooden work table and holds it there, fingers locked in a death-grip around the handle, knuckles turning white. She yanks out the knife, leaving a deep, gouged-out scar in the wood, and plunges it back in, drags it down, her entire body quivering. Clove is dead. Clove is dead, dead, dead, and it's all _that girl_'s fault.

* * *

><p>Technically, it's Thresh's fault. Clove tried to kill <em>that girl<em>, and Thresh came and killed Clove because he thought she killed Rue. So it's Rue's fault. No, it's that District 1 boy's fault. But Rue is dead and so is the District 1 boy, and she thinks that Thresh would never have killed Clove if Clove wasn't trying to kill _that girl_, so she pins the blame on _that girl_. She cringed every time Clove's head was smashed with that rock, again. And again. And again. She imagined she could hear the crunch of Clove's skull, the soft, visceral squish of her brain, mixed in with Clove's screaming pleas for Cato. The screams were muted, turned down because Andrea was sleeping and Thyme saw no reason to haunt a little girl's dreams with the screams of a girl being brutally murdered.

Cato came just in time to see Clove gather her last, shuddering, fluttering breaths. Just in time for to be too late. For a moment, the old Cato was back. Because there was Cato, gazing down at Clove's face with utmost worry and concern and desperation in his eyes as he cradled her in his arms and brushed her hair back from her face. She managed to whisper a final request, to "take care of her." Thyme wondered if "her" refers to _that girl_ to herself. Or maybe both. But then Clove's breath petered out, the black fire of her eyes dimmed down, and her last gasp of air escaped with whatever was left of her life, and she was gone.

She was relieved that Clove was no longer a pawn, no longer living in this hell. She was free, in a place where she could drop her tough-as-nails persona and indulge in the more frivolous pursuits that she so enjoyed in her early childhood. The grief didn't set in until the next day. The reality of it all didn't sink in. It wasn't until she walked into the kitchen the next morning and passed the tiny mural in the corner that it finally hit her. Clove was dead. She slowly sank to her knees in front of the painting, eyes stinging with tears that she didn't bother holding back. She let herself indulge in this one shameless display of sentimentality, because honestly? She didn't give a flying eff at that point. Her best friend, her rival, her _sister_ was dead because of a stupid little mishearing. She sobbed long and hard and silently, shoulders wracking silently with her grief as her finger traced the image over and over again; the smiles, the sun, the flowers, the hands, the two little girls. And now, the sun was still there, the flowers were still there, but the smiles were gone, the hands were hundreds of miles apart, and one little girl was a grieving mother-to-be, while the other was dead.

* * *

><p>The Capitol brings Clove back in a box. Clove's parents, her parents, and herself all gather at the room set up in the Justice Building for receiving dead Tributes. Andrea is thankfully at school A mortician - she assumes the nervous-looking young man is a mortician, with the white coat and all - approaches them, wringing his hands. What comes out of his mouth shocks them all.<p>

"I'm r-really so, so sorry about Clove. I-I mean, Miss Heathridge." _He remembers her name_, she thinks numbly. "I've fixed her. S-so you can't see the...the...well, um, anyways, I only received instructions to clean her up, but I...I thought it'd be better if she didn't come home with the...um, well, it'd be better if she came home c-complete. A-as complete as possible..." He pauses for a moment, unsure of how to explain himself. "I think it's best if I just show you. May I?" Clove's parents nod mutely.

Thyme doesn't really know what the young man's talking about until he gingerly, opens the coffin, revealing Clove, looking as though she were asleep instead of dead, dressed in her Reaping dress, hair neatly braided into her trademark plaits, _the dent in her forehead gone_. She doesn't know how the young man managed to fix that, doesn't really care, but for some reason, she feels an overwhelming rush of gratitude for him, for having granted Clove this one last piece of dignity, for letting her come home looking, for all intents and purposes, unscathed, whole, _complete._ This young man's actions do nothing to redeem the Capitol in Thyme's eyes. They do everything to redeem himself, however. Clove's mother actually breaks down in tears, holding a hand to her mouth as the other strokes Clove's forehead tenderly. Clove's father claps a hand down on the mortician's shoulder, making the younger man flinch a little, before Clove's father looks him straight in the eyes, and nods once, gravely. The young man nods back. Then he closes the lid, and they all snap out of their grief. Clove's mother sniffles back her last tears and composes herself in record time. It's time for the funeral.


	16. Toxic Valentine

_Author's note: I've just drawn a portrait of what I imagined Thyme to look like. Probably made her a bit too Hollywood. I blame my lack of artistic execution skills. Here's the link to the image! Just take out the spaces. Thanks!_

summersnow888 . deviantart #/ d5hjrdc

* * *

><p>The funeral is a quietly grand affair. Clove is given all the honors befitting a valiant Tribute who died fighting for her District. It takes place in front of the Justice Building, and most of District 2 shows up to pay their respects to the fallen girl-warrior. Scores of people stand behind the first and only row of seats. Clove's coffin is simple - but elegant - in design, a polished cedar with beveled edges and pewter handles and locks, lined with a cream-colored blanket. It is an open-coffin funeral, a small gesture of thanks to the Capitol mortician who went to such lengths to repair Clove's forehead. He is also invited to stay for the service, and is given a seat of honor, in the first row of seats along with Clove's parents, Thyme's parents, and Thyme herself. He sits on the edge, next to Thyme, and Thyme is puzzled at the utmost respect and...grief...in his expression. She had always thought that the Capitol saw Tributes as human entertainment, puppets in the ultimate reality show. She has seen what she thinks are flickers of humanity in Caesar Flickerman, in the way he really seems to try to play each Tribute up to their full potential, the way his face seems to show genuine emotion, despite his garish choice of clothing. But she has never seen this sort of expression in a Capitol citizen's face.<p>

She hears - but doesn't really listen to - the District 2 mayor make a speech about Clove's noble sacrifice for her District, her stony ruthlessness (evidence of the considerable child-rearing skills of her parents), her composure unto death (reflective of the hyper-pragmatic nature of District 2), her finesse with knives (a fine testament to her dedication and superb talent), and, most importantly, the honor Clove has brought home to the District, even in death.

* * *

><p>As the service draws to a close, the citizens of District 2 rise and begin to file forward, dropping flowers and tokens into the coffin. Thyme drops in the pair of necklaces they made together as children, simple things, wood and glass and metal trinkets strung onto lengths of twine. She had contemplated dropping in the knife Clove gave her as well, but decided against that. She wanted to keep it, something to show her child who Aunt Clove was. Besides, Clove's father had already placed a knife between Clove's clasped hands. <em>She really could be sleeping<em>, Thyme thinks, if it weren't for the various tokens and flowers lining the coffin. The mortician drops in a small...stuffed toy. A kitten, on closer inspection. Capitol-made, judging by the quality and newness. She glances at the young man and he shrugs.

"Something to keep her company. I have a feeling that she'd like cats," he whispers, almost apologetically. Thyme nods.

"I think she would."

* * *

><p>When the funeral is over, she goes back home and pulls out a bottle of elderberry juice and a paintbrush. She walks to the corner mural and sits down in front of it again, contemplatively, as she holds the juice in her left hand and the paintbrush in the other. Taking a deep breath, she dips the brush into the bottle and begins painting over the faded, ghost-lavender lines, slowly but surely infusing them with a vivid violet-wine life, careful to trace the lines exactly as they were, every sweep and curve and dot, every careless splatter and errant smudge they made as three-year-olds. After a good two hours, the vanishing mural is brought back to its former indigo glory. Thyme looks at her work and wills herself not to cry again.<p>

* * *

><p>"Thyme? Thyyyyyyme!" Andrea's voice echoes through the small house, wavering slightly. Thyme rushes down the stairs.<p>

"What? What is it, Andy?" Andrea runs over and grabs onto Thyme's skirts, blue eyes wide with fear.

"There's people at the front door. They wanted to see you." Andy's eyes flick around, as if checking to see if anyone's listening before pulling Thyme down. "_They're from the Capitol_," she whispers into Thyme's ear. Thyme stiffens and pulls back.

"What do they want? Did they tell you?"

Andrea shakes her head. "No. But they don't look like Peacekeepers. They look like...like the interview man." Thyme sighs and stands up, straightening out her skirt and brushing back her hair.

"Stay out of the shopfront until I call you, okay?"

Andrea nods and runs towards the back. Thyme walks across the store and takes a deep breath before opening the door. The first thing she sees is a man dressed in shocking violet. She had no idea that shocking violet was considered a manly color, but here he is, in his shocking violent suit, each blonde curl carefully arranged and cemented into place with unholy amounts of hair gel, teeth blindingly white and inhumanly straight as he grins.

"Hello, there. You must be Thyme Rivers?" He proffers a hand. She pretends she doesn't see it.

Thyme internally marvels at the fact that this man seems to be able to speak while maintaining that picture-plastic grin.

"...Depends on who's asking," she replies, voice thick with suspicion. She can't bring herself to place any amount of trust in a man who dresses in shocking violet. Even Caesar Flickerman had the good sense to don royal purple instead of this eye-watering hue.

"Forgive me for failing to introduce myself. I'm Marcus Lovejoy, here to interview you about Cato Steele. Every year, we interview the friends and family members of the five remaining Trib-"

"Yes, I know about that. So you're here to..."

"To interview you, of course!" His perky gregariousness was already exhausting.

"Assuming that I am Thyme Rivers."

"Yes, assuming that you are Thyme Rivers."

Thyme sighs and crosses her arms around her stomach as she leans against the doorway.

"Who sent you here?" she asks, chucking her chin towards Marcus.

"The...word on the street is that Thyme Rivers is close to Cato, and they sent me here."

"Uh-huh..."

"So...are you Thyme Rivers?"

Thyme weighs her choices in her head. She doesn't want to talk to this Capitol man, doesn't want the camera pointed in her face, doesn't want to say anything about Cato, because she doesn't know what she could say that would work to his benefit. The Cato she knows best isn't the Cato that everyone knows from television. She can't let them know that he has a kid. But then she realizes that she is Cato's best chance. She could spin out a Cato that the Capitol couldn't resist.

"...Yeah. Do you wanna come in?"

Marcus grins wider, if that's even possible. Thyme cringes internally. She's sure that her vision is being slowly impaired by the combination of shocking white teeth and shocking violet fabric. With a dash of shocking blond curls for good measure.

"Excellent, excellent."

Thyme steps aside, lets Marcus and the camera crew in, and sits herself down on one of the wooden chairs, gesturing for Marcus to do the same.

"So, Thyme Rivers, how did you come to know District 2 Tribute Cato Steele?"

_Lie_.

"We met when we were five. He pulled my hair during recess, hard enough for me to fall."

"Oh, my! What happened next?"

"I punched him. And he punched me back. And before we knew it, we were in an all-out brawl." A smirk grows across Thyme's face as she begins "recollecting" the entirely-fabricated fight. "He got me pretty good. I'll tell you something about Cato that you probably already know: he doesn't let up. Didn't matter that I was a skinny little girl. He still slapped me straight across the face. Cato doesn't take shit from anyone."

Marcus looks shocked at how freely Thyme speaks of getting slapped by a boy. Or maybe he's shocked that Cato slapped a girl at so young an age. She really doesn't know why he's surprised; Cato's already threatened to amputate a helpless, unlucky girl and skewered several more.

"Really! How did the two of you become friends then, after such a _violent_ first encounter?"

Thyme shrugs.

"You can't get into a few fights with someone without being their friend eventually. We were rivals and best friends. Kept pushing each other to be the best, you know, that sort of thing."

"Did the two of you ever become anything..._more_?" Marcus's grin grows even wider, if such a thing is possible, and gives Thyme a knowing look.

_Lie_.

"No, of course not!" Thyme looks shocked and slightly disgusted, grateful for the fact that her pregnancy isn't anything that can't be hidden by a loose dress. "Who has time for that kind of thing?"

"I see..." He doesn't really believe her. She turns on the steel in her eyes.

"This is District 2, Mr. Lovejoy. We don't fuck around. Literally and metaphorically." Thyme half-smirks wickedly and Marcus laughs uproariously.

"Oh, that was a _good_ one!"

Thyme leans forward conspiratorially.

"But between you and me, Mr. Lovejoy, I must admit that the idea is very, _very_ tempting." She tries to inject a seductive drawl into her voice and hopes that it works. She's really never tried this before. But she hopes that if she can play up Cato's...sex appeal...she can get the Capitol women to throw money at him the way they threw it at Finnick Odair nine years ago. In a city that twisted, she's willing to bet a good deal of money that there are enough women warped enough to find television-Cato's sheer violence and bloodlust attractive. She has heard word of a certain novel of questionable content involving a violent - yet extremely handsome - male lead making the bestseller list in the Capitol, something to do with shades of...of...of some color.

Marcus Lovejoy seems intrigued and leans forward as well.

"Do tell, Miss Rivers..."

_Sort-of lie._

"I don't know, Mr. Lovejoy. There's just something so...so _seductive_ about a man who has power and knows how to wield it, you know what I mean? He's dangerous, but you just _can't stay away_. He just keeps drawing you back, keeps making you come back for more. It's in the way he carries himself, the way he's always surrounded by an aura of sheer, raw _power_." She throws in an affected shiver for effect. "And don't get me started on his eyes. There's just something in those ice-blue eyes that just completely holds you spellbound. You just can't look away. It's almost hypnotic, really, when he looks in your eyes, like he can see straight into your soul and it leaves you entirely under his control. Trust me, I've been on the receiving end of quite a number of those glares and let me tell you, I could feel it tingling under my skin and through my very bones." She stares at Marcus Lovejoy straight in the eyes and lowers her voice into a sultry half-whisper, and she can see that she has him, hook, line, and sinker.

"Oh, _my_."

Thyme arches an eyebrow and smirks. And then tries really hard not to laugh. Or cough violently.

"So, tell me, Miss Rivers, what do you think Cato's chances are?"

"Are you really asking me that question, Mr. Lovejoy? Cato's going to win."

"You sound very sure of yourself, Miss Rivers." Thyme scoffs.

"Of course I'm sure of myself. Let's take a look at the current competition." Thyme begins counting off on her fingers. "There's Lover Boy, who can't walk, and the Girl on Fire, who has to take care of him and is absolutely useless in hand-to-hand combat. The District 5 girl's good at hiding, but there's nothing left for her to steal at this point, she's starving to death, has no sponsors, and has no fighting skills worth speaking of at all. The only person left in the game who's any sort of challenge at all is the District 11 boy, but he totally lacks actual fighting experience. He's a good brawler, I'll give him that, but the odds are not in his favor when you take into account Cato's sheer experience with a sword and with fighting in general. There's just some things that you can't rely on instinct and innate skill for. Some things you just gotta learn." Thyme leans back in her seat and steeples her fingers, a cocky grin on her face. "Besides, brawling's no good against a greatsword."

"Aaand...there you have it, folks! It's been a pleasure interviewing you, Miss Rivers."

"Trust me, the pleasure's _all_ mine," Thyme drawls. Now she sits and waits.


	17. The Art of Suicide

It is too late. It is all too late. The interview was useless, this late in the game. She should've known. She should've know better. She was stupid. So, so stupid. And now she is raw and hollow, like someone ripped out her throat and scraped out her innards and her flesh and left her gutted corpse in the snow to bleed and freeze and turn black with frostbite. She's already vomited her dinner, and the lining of her throat burns with stomach acids, and the screaming didn't help. She's locked herself into her room, and lies on the ground, staring blankly at the ceiling._ It did not just happen. That did not just happen. It is not real. Nothing is real._ But it is real, too real, terribly real.

* * *

><p>He had won. Cato had won. He had killed Thresh after a bloody, brutal fight, and Cato had stripped Thresh of his armor and run off to kill the star-crossed lovers. There were mutts, horrible, horrible muts with the eyes of dead Tributes, and there was Rue, Rue's dark brown eyes, little Rue with her warm eyes and curling brown-black hair and small, soft smile and then she was all snarling fangs and dripping saliva and the same brown eyes twisted in bloodlust. There was Glimmer, crueler than ever. There were all the eyes of the Tributes, warped in desperation and bone-eating hatred. There was running and screaming and her screaming and Andy shrieking and her father closing his eyes and wincing with every snarl and her mother gasping and letting out small strangled moans and holding Andy and Thyme close.<p>

There was Peeta letting go, sweet, sweet, crippled Peeta, better because of the medicine but still weak, his leg still damaged beyond repair, too damaged to run, too damaged to survive. That girl half-drags him along, she is trying, she loves him (or so she thinks or so she hopes), she really loves him, she won't leave him behind. She won't leave him behind but he'll leave himself behind so he says he loves her more than anything, really, he'll love her forever, and he will never leave her, but she has to live, she has a family to go home, a sister who loves her and a mother who needs here and a boy who loves her too. He kisses her one last time and holds her close one last time and and yanks himself out of her grasp and smiles and tells her goodbye before the mutts catch up to him and then they catch up and everyone screams. Screams and screams and screams and nobody stops screaming. Peeta screams for her to run. She screams for Peeta. Thyme screams for Peeta. Andy screams for everyone. Everyone screams and nobody stops. She watches him smile one last timeat the Girl on Fire before the mutts leap on him and his beautiful, sadly serene face twists in pain before he falls, covered by mutts that rip his limbs apart. His arm. Flying flesh. Tangles of blood vessels. A chunk of golden hair. His eyes. Bitten out. His beautiful blue eyes that reminded her so much of Cato. Gone. A bony, hollow, bloody mess in their place. Andy shrieks louder and longer than ever and Thyme's mother whisks her away upstairs. She stays behind to watch, curled up in her father's arms. His face is gone. There's just a bloody, gory mess of flesh and bone. His scalp is gone. The golden hair's all ripped out, chunk by chunk with the scalp. There's just a skull, and then just shards of the skull as his brains spill out, smashed to bits by slavering jaws. His throat is torn open and she can see the tendons in his neck attached to his spine, and she can feel her stomach twist and turn but she forces herself to watch. His torso is ripped open to reveal his ribcage and the glistening, gleaming organs still twitching even though Peeta's dead. The mutts rip his bones open and rip everything out and they don't stop until he's nothing but a pile of ripped torn broken mutilated desecrated shredded besmirched flesh and jagged shards of bone sprinkled with golden thread.

"Daddy..." she whimpers, and her father holds her closer.

"Thyme, sweetheart, why don't you go upstairs with Mom and Andy? I'll tell you what happens tomorrow morning."

She swallows and shakes her head stubbornly. "No. No, I have to see what happens to Cato."

"Thyme, I can just -"

"I have to." Her father says nothing, just nods.

The mutts lose all interest in Peeta as soon as they've thoroughly obliterated his body and turn to the Girl on Fire, snarling, blood and saliva dripping down their jaws. She runs towards the Cornucopia, scrambles to the top, her climb hindered by the mud and blood on her boots and the polished metal surface of the Cornucopia. Cato seems to have come to the same conclusion, that the Cornucopia is the safest place to hide from the mutts. There is a moment of stunned silence. Neither of them seem to have expected to meet the other in this time, this place, this manner.

"It's just me and you now, Fire Girl. But you can't burn forever." His eyes are wild, crazed, desperate pools of ice, and the blood streaked across his face doesn't help. Where there were hints of madness before, madness is now painted all over him. His fingers flex, gripping the hilt of his sword even more tightly, and she can see the veins pop in his arms. The Girl on Fire says nothing, but eyes him with the cautious, leery, wide-eyed terror of a cornered animal. Her eyes flick between the edge of the Cornucopia, Cato's sword hand, his feet, and his eyes, and she knows that the Girl on Fire is trying to plot how to throw Cato over the edge. It wouldn't be too hard, really, given Cato's mental instability and the slippery surface. You just had to get past the sword. The Girl on Fire reaches for an arrow and nocks it into place. He makes a mad, lumbering scramble towards her. She lets the arrow fly. Thyme screams. The arrowhead lodges itself firmly into his shoulder. The Girl on Fire is surprisingly off, no doubt a combination of shock, nerves, exhaustion. He snarls in pain and rips the arrow out (stupid stupid stupid), chest heaving, eyes still crazed. He's lost weight. His face is hollow and his muscles are leaner, pulled more tightly across his bones. Cato lunges after her again, but she's smaller than he is, and much quicker on her feet. But he's got a longsword, and her arrows aren't much good against that. He swings it wildly, and she's too preoccupied with dodging the blade to reach for an arrow. But his rage-blinded lumbering worries Thyme, because she knows that he might just trip and slip and fall into the pack of mutts waiting below, and she couldn't watch them kill Cato the way they killed Peeta. But she knows that if he fell, she'd watch to the bloody end. He slips and stumbles in blood and mud but he doesn't fall, and for that she is grateful. The Girl on Fire manages to shoot another arrow in desperation, and this time her aim is true. It lands solidly in his chest, piercing his sternum and Thyme chokes back a scream. She promised to be stone. She promised to be stone, and she's broken that promise, but now it's time to keep it. Cato snarls again, more animal than human by now, but he doesn't stop until he has the Girl on Fire cornered against the edge of the Cornucopia. The mutts circle below, drooling and growling and bristling and practically bursting in anticipation for the kill. The Girl on Fire knows. She grabs the front of Cato's shirt. Thyme freezes.

"If I burn, you burn with me."

And she leans backwards and begins to drag Cato down with her and Thyme stays cold as stone and then Cato runs her through with his sword. The Girl on Fire's eyes widen in shock and pain before her fingers loosen and she falls down over the edge, and the fall seems to take an eternity before she crumples on the ground, looking smaller than she ever did alive. The mutts leave, uninterested in a dead body, and a cannon fires.

* * *

><p>Cato won. She is too stunned to speak, not believing that he has won and is coming home. She's spent weeks preparing herself for Cato's death and now that he's not dead as expected, she doesn't know what to do. She can't celebrate, can't dance around in joy, because part of her knows this is too good to be true. Cato can't just win like this and come home. It was too simple. She knows it's wrong to not celebrate in her good fortune and just be grateful that Cato's coming home, but she's seen too many men die when they seemed like they were going to make a full recovery, too many men fall off the edge of a crumbling cliff and plummet to death in a fraction of a time it took for them to climb to that point, spent too much time screaming and cursing and crying and praying and steeling herself to readily accept Cato's victory and let herself go too quickly. There's something wrong with Cato, the way his eyes are still insane even though he's the last one standing, the way his fingers are still clenched around the sword hilt, how his arm is still tensed to strike, how the blade is...tilted slightly inward, towards him. Her heart jumps into her throat and her hand moves to her stomach, rubs it gently, then wraps her arms around it as Claudius Templesmith's voice echoes out from the television.<p>

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victor of the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games-"

He's cut off by Cato's roar as he flips the blade around, grabs the hilt with both hands, and runs himself through.

Thyme screams and gasps for air and screams again as she watches bleeding, broken Cato collapse on top of the Cornucopia, the sword glistening silver and blood-red jammed into his stomach and sticking out of his back. She watches as a helicraft descends upon the Cornucopia and gently scoops Cato up and pulls him in and she bolts from the couch and vomits into the toilet between gasps and sobs and she rinses out her mouth and runs up to her room and bolts the door and her legs give out and she collapses on the floor, a sobbing, wailing, softly screaming mess until her throat's too raw to scream and she has no strength left to cry and she lies there, numb and hollow to her bones and staring blankly up at the ceiling with the same thought running through her head. _ It's not real. It's not real. Nothing's real. That didn't happen. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Nothing's real. Nothing's real. It's not real._

* * *

><p>He's flying, flying, flying back to Thyme and the baby and District 2 and home and his mother. Flying. He can see Thyme smiling, her hair whipping in the wind, the sun setting behind her, and it gilds the tips of her hair golden. The prairie grass dances around her as she twirls, laughing, extending her arm out to him as she dances. Then it's the Spring Festival, and he can feel her against him under the flickering, gossamer glow of the strung-up lights, feel the curve of waist under her arms and the ends of her hair in his hands and her forehead resting against his shoulder and her arms wrapped around his neck, and he can smell her, a warm peppermint-y scent that reminds him of winter. He sees a baby in Thyme's arms with her hair and eyes, a baby that lights up and gurgles with happiness at his presence. There's a little blonde girl that clutches to her hand, grinning widely, and when prompted by Thyme, runs toward him with open arms. He picks her up and spins her around and she giggles in delight.<p>

"You came back! Just like you promised!" the little girl exclaims. He says that yes, he did, just like he promised, but he doesn't know who she is, even though he has a feeling that he does. But he can't remember who this little girl is, this little girl who has his hair and his eyes.

And then it's a black haze of voices and sharp pricks and a godawful, searing burn where his stomach should be. He tries to breathe, but the skin on his torso begins to rip and tear and then all he can think of is mutts, mutts trying to shred him into ribbons of meat. He sees them digging Clove out of the grave and clawing the coffin into splinters before dragging her corpse out of the ground while her eyes fly open and she screams and spits curses at the mutts, at the Capitol, at him. Her skin falls off in grey rags, both from decay and the mutts' teeth savaging her flesh. She is a living dead nightmare, a shrieking, disintegrating banshee crowned in unraveled, ragged black hair that rips out along with her scalp. He shouts that he's sorry, that he's killed the Girl on Fire, that he won, that he did as he promised. Didn't he? He promised to Thyme that he'd come home, and he will. He promised to Clove that he'd take care of her, and he did.

"_You didn't save me! You were too late! Too fucking late! You let District 11 smash my head in. I was screaming for you to save me but you were too fucking slow, Cato! You broke my heart and you let them break my skull. They broke my skull, Cato! And you betrayed me. You broke my heart!_" She screeches at him and reaches for him while the mutts rip her legs off and she falls to the ground, still reaching, clawing at the ground to drag herself closer and she almost grabs his ankle before he snaps out of his horrified stupor and backs away and runs. And he sees Thyme in the distance with her back to him, as if she's waiting. He runs, faster and faster and faster and reaches her and puts a hand on her shoulder.

She turns, and he stops dead in his tracks. She has no face. It's a bloody mess, and he can see the tooth marks gouged into flesh and bone. Her green, green eyes are empty bloody sockets, her lips are torn away to reveal a skeletal grin of teeth. And then this faceless Thyme begins to speak, her jaws opening and closing and somehow words are formed even though she has no lips.

"_You let them get Clove. You volunteered. I told you not to volunteer, but you did. And now they got me and the baby. Because you weren't here._"

And he sees that her stomach has been ripped open too, and he screams. He screams and screams and screams and he knows that it is all his fault and his eyes fly open and he sees tubes running out of his arms and something rubbery is covering his mouth and nose and he claws at it and tries to rip the tubes and needles out of his arms and succeeds and it burns and stings and _burns _and _stings _as the needles rip tracks in his arms and he and screams and the skin on his torso rips open again and he screams until something pricks him in the arm again and he falls into pitch blackness.


	18. Start a Fire

As the initial shock wears off, she begins crying. It's just tears at first, hot and salty, running out the corners of her eyes and dripping onto the floor. Then the shaking sets in, as she rolls onto her side and curls into herself and wraps her arms around her stomach and trembles, her entire body spasming. Her sobbing comes out as a hissing, whispered sort of scream as her frame is wracked with the force of her sobs. It hurts, hurts worse than it did on the mountain. The center of her chest is burning cold, burning and freezing and aching the way her fingers burn with cold in the winter. She thinks of the baby, who will never know his father, who will grow up with a mother held in varying degrees of scorn in the eyes of District 2. She hates Cato. He broke his promise. He promised he would come home and it would all be alright, but she knew he was going to break his promise even if he tried to keep it. She hates that he broke, when he promised that he would be like stone. She hates him.

* * *

><p>When she composes herself, she kneels in front of her nightstand drawer and pulls out five ribbons (blueblackwhitegreenred) and an old photograph. She gazes at it as tears well in her eyes. The photograph was taken over a decade ago, a picture of them at five, entering school and the training center for the first time. He was scowling at Thyme as he attempted to pry her off his back and she was grinning like a loon behind him at the camera, her arms thrown around his shoulders. It was the only photo she had of him. They were so young, she thought, young and naive and innocent. Back then, Reapings and Games were nothing more than words. She sets the picture down and picks up the ribbons, winding them through her fingers. The ribbons slip between her fingers like satin snakes, and she weaves them through again, pulling so tightly that her fingers turn splotchy from a lack of circulation. The pain anchors her, weighs her down enough to remember that she cannot break down now, that she must be stone like she promised. She contents herself with remembering. She remembers his cocky smirk, the quirk of his lips, his smiles, his real smiles, the ones that light her up and light up the world, the ones that nobody else has seen. She remembers his solidness, his there-ness, his safeness, how being wrapped in his arms could make the Capitol and the Games and Reapings vanish, make her feel safe and loved, like there was nothing in the world that could hurt her. She remembers how he smells, smoky and earthy and musky, a scent that blanketed over her and wrapped her in a warm cocoon of safety. She remembers his hair, soft and blonde, less golden than Peeta's (oh sweet sweet Peeta), paler like early-morning sunbeams, remembers the way it ruffles through her fingers like new-grown grass. She remembers his ferocity, his rage, how much he could terrify her when it was directed at her, how much he could make her feel invincible when it was directed at someone against her. How love and rage ran neck-and-neck and side-by side with each other in his veins, how deeply they were intertwined, how one led to the other and other led back to one. She remembers how all his emotions ran together like the ribbons in her finger, love and pride and hate and innocence and strength all twisted and tangled together in a mix that was so patently Cato. She wishes she had more than an old fading photograph and five ribbons, but she doesn't, so she holds on to them tighter than she holds on to life.<p>

* * *

><p>They are clustered around the dining table, around Cato's mother, who rips open an envelope slowly and desperately. Thyme pushes her back against the doorway, heel kicking a steady tattoo against the wood, arms crossed, eyes staring resolutely down at the ground. Her mother sits next to Mrs. Steele, one hand comfortingly covering the other woman's. Her father stands behind her mother, and Andrea is in his arms, burying her face into his neck and peeking nervously over her shoulder. Mrs. Paxton stands behind Mrs. Steele, her fingers clenched so tightly around the back of the younger woman's chair that the skin across her knuckles is stretched and taut to the point of almost breaking.<p>

The letter had arrived at Mrs. Steele's house earlier that day via Peacekeeper. All that was written on the envelope was "Mrs. Lydia Steele" in a severe, typed font. She had run to Mrs. Paxton's house, frantic and nervous, and the older woman had taken one look at the envelope and called for her husband before rushing Mrs. Steele over to the Rivers residence. Which led to the current scene of nerves and tension so thick in the air, Thyme felt like choking on it and screaming. The envelope falls away and Mrs. Steel unfolds the letter with trembling fingers and begins to read.

"Dear Mrs. Lydia Steele -" She pauses to compose herself, breathes in deeply, and continues. "I am pleased to inform you that...that..."

Thyme stops herself from yelling, "That what?!"

"That your son, District 2 male Tribute Cato Steele, is...alive." Mrs. Steele's voice cracks on the last word with a shuddery gasp of relief. It is as if the entire room is released from the chokehold of an invisible entity. Andy stares disbelievingly at the letter, Mrs. Paxton's fingers loosen their death grip, her father closes his eyes as his head falls, and her mother holds her forehead in her hand. Thyme slides slowly to the floor in disbelief.

"He is currently in critical but stable condition. He received medical attention quickly enough to allow the medical team to save him, and we were able to repair all damage to his internal organs and muscles. Thankfully, he sword missed his spine, so he will be able to regain the full of his motor abilities as soon as his wounds are sufficiently healed. Best wishes, Lysander Silver."

Thyme's eyebrows furrow at the closing.

"Isn't Lysander the one who...the one who fixed Clove?"

"Yes, he is," her father murmurs.

She wonders why he is doing this, why he fixed Clove's head and brought kitten toys to her funeral and sent this letter when he didn't have to. Repairing Clove was an extension of his job, and the kitten may have simply been the product of a soft heart, but Thyme thinks that there is something greater going on here. She's afraid to think what. It smacks of Cato's thoughts on the mountain, and those thoughts are dangerous, because she knows that a passing thought grows into an idea which in turn grows into planning and finally actions, actions that could kill them all. She shoves the thought away and just relishes in the fact that Cato is alive.

* * *

><p>It still hurts to breathe. He can feel his ribs expand tightly against his skin and stretch his stitches painfully. They're terribly ugly, those stitches running right across his solar plexus, black thread stained dark blood-red holding together angry, splotchy pink skin, nothing like the fine white thread that Thyme used to stitch his arm with. Then again, he supposes that the gash on his arm was nothing compared to this monster of a wound. He remembers how he got it, but the memory comes to him in flashes and moments. He thought that running himself through with a greatsword would be a bit more memorable, but it's not. He remembers terror, a blinding terror and confusion, thinking that he was supposed to be dead. But he wasn't, so he had to fix that discrepancy between fate and reality. He remembers pain, a sharp, searing pain, and then then it was a horrifying miasma of nightmares and waking moments and an inability to distinguish between the two. He looks down at his arms and he can still see the thin line where Clove caught his arm with her knife so many months ago, when he was still home and Thyme was still there. But now his arms are marred with so many other scars, scars from the Arena, scars from where he ripped the IV needles out and accidentally dragged long tears across his skin. They're thinner, too, his arms. He hasn't really eaten properly since that Girl on Fire blew up the food stores. Hasn't slept properly, either. The morphling-induced sleep doesn't count. It wasn't sleep. It was just blacking out. When he manages to sleep without the drugs, he sees horrible things, but he's not sure what's worse, horrifying things that he can see or darkness and the horrors that he can't.<p>

* * *

><p>After what seems like an age and a half in the hospital bed, a nurse tells him that he's to meet with his mentor. She helps him dress in soft black pants and a white cotton shirt. Julius Paxton is sitting at the table, his eyebrows knitted together in an austere sort of concern.<p>

"You doing alright, Cato?"

Cato nods. "Yes, sir." His mentor gestures for him to take a seat across the table, and Cato obliges, wincing slightly as he sits down and the stitches stretch. Julius Paxton is a man much like his wife, with no time for nonsense and unnecessary words.

"Do you remember what happened your last night in the Arena?" Cato nods slowly, staring at the grain in the table, the thin veins of silvery grey that run through the ebony wood.

"We were on the Cornucopia. There were mutts on the ground. She tried to drag me down with her. I stabbed her and she let go. She fell..." Cato's voice tapers off as he remembers what she looked like, falling like it took an eternity, how small she looked on the ground. She reminded him of Thyme, with her dark hair and piercing eyes and strength and overwhelming ferocity. When the District 12 girl fell off the Cornucopia, rage and shock and fear warring for top billing in her steel-grey eyes, all he saw was Thyme with the same look burning in her eyes, coffee-black hair tangled and billowing as she fell, fell, fell, hands grasping fruitlessly at the air, desperately seeking purchase that didn't exist, blood still spraying from her wound. And it was Thyme lying on the ground, limbs splayed awkwardly like he saw in his dreams, broken and beaten and bloodied, face contorted in hatred and terror, with a gaping wound in her stomach. "And I did it. It was my fault. I killed Thyme. I stabbed her." He starts hyperventilating, eyes staring blankly at the table, the words tripping out of his mouth in a frenzy. "I thought she was the District 12 girl, but it wasn't it was Thyme and I killed her and she fell off the Cornucopia and I was the one who did it, oh my God, I killed Thyme, I stabbed her, I didn't know, I thought she was the District 12 girl, I didn't know it was Thyme, she tried to hold on to me " Cato looks up at Julius Paxton with desperate eyes. "I'm not supposed to be here. I'm supposed to be dead, like Thyme. I'm not -"

He's cut off by the older man, who leans across the table and grabs Cato's shoulders with an almost-painful force that shocks Cato into silence.

"Cato, listen to me. Listen. You didn't kill Thyme. You killed Katniss Everdeen, the District 12 Tribute. Thyme is safe. She's still alive. She's back in District 2, waiting for you to come home."

Cato's breaths slow down as Julius's words sink in.

"She's not dead?"

"She's not dead."

Cato swallows and licks his lips and closes his eyes and nods. Then his eyes fly open again as another realization hits him.

"Does she know I'm alive? Does my mother know?"

"They've both been informed that you are alive, yes."

Cato relaxes and sighs in relief, breathing deeply.

"Okay...okay...So," Cato looks up at Julius. "What did you want to talk about?"

"Your victory interview. Your attempted suicide in the Arena caused quite the uproar in the Capitol. Very few people know that you're still alive. For all the people know, there is no real Victor for the 74th Hunger Games, since you're supposedly dead. If you really were dead, this would be the first time in the history of Panem that a Hunger Games has ended without a real Victor."

Cato's eyebrows furrow in confusion. "But I'm not dead. Everybody will know that when the interview happens."

"It's not that simple. You running yourself through on your sword is being seen as a sign of rebellion, and you're almost a martyr now, even though you're District 2."

"But...but I wasn't trying to...I thought I killed Thyme and I -"

"Yes, but nobody knows that. Nobody outside of District 2 knows about Thyme, and nobody knows why you stabbed yourself. They just know that you did. And they think it's because you wanted to end your life on your own terms, not the Capitol's, that you refused to be a piece in the Games, and if they don't stop thinking that, the Capitol will have an uprising on its hands."

Uprising...the words spin in Cato's head. Because isn't that what he wanted, back there on the mountain? Hadn't he wanted to take his family and run away into the prairie? Hadn't he said that he would kill whoever tried to stop them? But then Thyme, in her ever-practical way, told him that they would all die trying, and she was right. They would all die, him and Thyme and the baby and his parents and her parents and Clove's parents and Julius and his wife and the little blond girl in his dreams that he didn't know, if there was a rebellion. The Capitol would burn and beat them all.

"How...how do I stop it? How do I make them stop thinking I was trying to rebel?"

Julius looks into Cato's eyes with an apologetic resignation.

"You tell them about Thyme."

"No, no, I can't -"

Julius cuts off Cato's protests.

"You tell them about a girl back home that you love, that you were so desperate, so crazed with the thought of going home that you forgot that you were just in Arena, that she was safe at home, you thought that she had died, because if she hadn't she would be with you, and she wasn't. You couldn't bear the thought of living without her, so you tried to kill yourself. You tell half a truth and embellish the rest and you pray that they believe you."

Cato nods. He would lie until his tongue turned black if it meant saving the ones he loved.


	19. Be Your Everything

He's standing in the wings of the stage, behind the curtains, out of sight, running his fingers over the the red silk ribbon in his pocket as he watches Caesar Flickerman stride across the stage to the cheers and applause of the audience.

"Hello, everybody! What a game! I think we can all agree that the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games were the best so far, am I right?" The crowd shouts their assent.

"Now, the question on everybody's mind is: who is the Victor? Or actually: do we even have a Victor?" The audience quiets down, begins murmuring amongst themselves. "Because for the first time in Hunger Games history, we...might not actually have one." The audience gasps as one, and Cato can hear a few soft wails. He wryly ponders whether the few who weep do so because he was their "favorite" Victor or simply because the Games have turned out so disappointingly. "Well, tonight," Caesar goes on, "we'll find out for sure! Ladies and gentlemen, let's give a _huge_ round of applause for tonight's special guest...the one...the only, _Cato Steele_!"

That's his cue, and he walks across the stage, waving and grinning at the unseen crowd as they scream and cheer his name and applaud wildly. The bright lights of the stage are, quite frankly, terrifying. From where he stands, all Cato can see is a mass of black littered with sparkling spangles from the jewels and glitter that adorns the audience. He is all in black, a flat, rich black. Gone are the rich coppers and scintillating sharkskins and polished leathers, the textiles and tones designed to highlight and accentuate an air of arrogant superiority. In their place is somber black gabardine and buffed leather and softly-draped slacks. Gone is his cocksure swagger, his self-assured grin. He keeps his back straight, but his expression is self-effacingly neutral as he shakes hands with Caesar Flickerman and seats himself down. This is not the Cato who went into the Games, as he's sure everyone can tell. This is not some ferocious, ruthless, brutal killer. This is just another broken boy hidden behind a mask of faded bloodlust. They exchange some meaningless pleasantries, something that he does without really thinking as to what's happening. They start with recaps of the Games, and he doesn't want to watch his nightmares thrown on a huge screen behind him, but he has to. So he does. It starts with clips from the interviews, and Cato realizes how much..._bigger_ he used to look. He has not smirked like that in a long time, and it irks him. He hates feeling this helpless, and some dark recess of his mind traitorously whispers that it's all Thyme's fault. She made him go soft around the edges. And privately, without malice, he agrees. He wouldn't be in this mess if Thyme wasn't there to mess with his head and dance around in his subconscious, feeding him with horrible nightmares. Now his arrogance, his armor is gone, and he sort of hates it. They skip to the beginning of the Games, the countdown at the Cornucopia. And, dear God, there's Clove. Strong, sweet, savage Clove, beautiful and _whole_ and _alive_, not the hollow, haunted, terrified little girl she was before she died, the little girl that muttered and twitched and shrieked softly in her sleep, that flinched at every rustling leaf and flickering shadow and wore herself down into a shuddering heap of nerves and tics.

* * *

><p>They jump to his first kill, that stupid girl who lit the fire at night. He watches himself mock that girl, and he's vaguely disgusted by himself, but the disgust is quickly washed away by the rationale that he wouldn't really have done what he said, he might've just cut her head off, something clean and fast. Besides, she deserved to be scared. She was so...stupid. And weak. But something about her begging and pleading shakes him, and he realizes for the first time just how very <em>young<em> she was. Thirteen, maybe? Fourteen? And suddenly he is grateful that Clove cut the girl's terror short with a knife to the chest. Then there's clips of the Careers gang running through the forest, wreaking havoc and violence and terror, and he tells himself that he needed to do all that, or else he wouldn't be going home. Whatever means to achieve the ends. Thyme would understand. Underneath her softness and morals she was really quite brutal. He knew that if push came to shove, Thyme wouldn't hesitate to kill everyone who dared to harm those she loved. Yes, Thyme would understand.

* * *

><p>Then they show the tracker jacker nest falling, falling, falling, and he can hear Clove screaming, and for a moment, he almost snaps. He hears her scream every night in his dreams, but always in anger, in rage, as something decayed. He hasn't seen a whole, living Clove, hasn't heard her scream in terror for so long, and it cuts deep, gnaws at the part of him that writhes in guilt at being unable to save her as she screamed for him.<p>

"_Cato! Cato! CATO! Cato, PLEASE! Help me! CATO!_"

He stiffens and his fingers dig into the armrest, knuckles turning white as it flashes back, the dent in Clove's broken skull, the fire in her gunmetal-grey eyes flickering and fading, face pale, looking so, so small and so, so scared, cradled in his arms. He had forgotten how very small she was. She was always so bold, she seemed larger than life. But now he remembers, she's smaller than Thyme, barely reaching his shoulder.

They cut to his fight with the District 12 boy, and it's all guilt. That boy loved the fire girl as much as he loves Thyme, and Thyme was so like the Girl on Fire. He knows how it feels to love someone so much, you would give up your life for them, and he respects that boy for being willing to betray the Careers pack and sentence himself to near-certain death for the fire girl. He watches himself rip a gash down the boy's leg, down to the bone, and his stomach flips over, more disgusted at himself than the gore. He does not know how he knows it, but he knows that Thyme will not forgive him for this one. _He was like you_, he can hear her whisper, half-snarling, half-mourning. _He was just like you, Cato. He loved a girl more than he loved his life, and you killed him for it. You killed yourself. _That much is true. He _did_ kill himself, so many times over, he killed himself to live and in the end, when he was the only one left alive, he killed himself again. He promised to be like stone, strong and unbreaking and cold, and he broke his promise. He promised to come home, and it would seem like he has kept that promise, but he is dead.

* * *

><p>There are short clips of him killing other Tributes, of the food stores exploding to all hell, but he does not care. He just wants to go home. But then they play the scene where Claudius Templesmith announces that there has been a change to the rules, catch him and Clove staring at each other, thinking that they could both go home, and he doesn't want to watch anymore. He knows that Clove's memory will haunt him forever. He's been friends with her since he was five and she was four. He loved her, differently from Thyme, but he loved her all the same. She was even his girlfriend for a short while, and he never stopped loving her. He loves Thyme more than he knows how to say it, he couldn't live if she wasn't there, wasn't his, he would cut out his own heart for her and let himself be eaten by the mutts for her and set himself on fire for her, if it meant that she could live. He remembers the soft silkiness of her coffee-black hair and the hard sparkle of her emerald eyes, her long, sculpted fingers tracing along his jawbone and the shell of his ear, her voice, husky and light and harsh all at once, whispering into his ear, and the warmth of her curves pressed flush against him. But he loved Clove, too. Just differently. Where Thyme is his matching puzzle piece, Clove is his reflection, all pride and strength and rage, untempered by the sort of coldness and clarity that Thyme has. Clove fueled his rage and Thyme reined him in. Clove was his anger and Thyme was his ruthlessness. And he knows Thyme will never truly forgive him for failing to save her sister, no matter how much she tells him that it is not his fault, that he ran as quickly as he could, as soon as he heard, no matter how much she tells herself that it was not his fault, that he tried so hard. He knows he will spend the rest of his life trying to pay back that debt. He knows he will never succeed.<p>

* * *

><p>They show him killing the District 11 boy that killed Clove, and this is one kill that he does not feel guilty for. He killed Clove. He deserved to die. He was lucky that Cato was merciful enough to give him a quick death, not the long, painful, prolonged one that he should've gotten.<p>

* * *

><p>And now it's almost over. Now they're at the Cornucopia, and this he can't watch. It feels like killing Thyme all over again, and he feels like killing himself all over again. He watches her fingers fall away from his shirt as he runs her through. He watches the Girl on Fire's face, the pain growing into shock then twisting into anger and melting into fear, and he does not remember seeing her face change like this when he killed her. Of course, when he killed her, he thought it was Thyme that he had killed, it was Thyme's face that had all these emotions playing across it. But it's the fear that hits him hardest, her last look of sheer terror when she falls over the edge, fingers grasping blankly, unwilling to die even when it's too late to do anything but die. And she is nothing but dead when she hits the ground, before she hits the ground. They play her fall in slow motion, and she seems to fall for forever, eyes fading like Clove's as she lands on the ground, a long drop with a short stop. There, on the black grass, Cato can see how small she is, more Clove's size than Thyme's. Actually, now that he thinks about it, she looks more like Clove than Thyme in general. But she acted so much like Thyme. And oh, now he's stabbed himself, but the image barely fazes him. He feels oddly detached from it, like he's watching someone else, like he's a ghost. But the muscles in his torso clench out of reflex and the pain of it brings him back, vaguely registering the sound of applause, and he realizes that the montage is over. Caesar Flickerman grins widely and applauds, and he manages to pull off one of his old smirks. He has no idea how he did that.<p>

"Well, Cato! That was _quite_ the performance! Now, _everyone_ is simply _dying_ to know...why _did_ you stab yourself?"

Cato quirks his lips up in a wry half-grin before his face cracks into a smirk that is simultaneously sheepish and arrogant.

"There's this girl back home-"

The audience draws a collective gasp, and Cato swears he can hear a few wails of heartbroken despair. Caesar Flickerman's face is a textbook expression of polite, yet elated, surprise.

"Really? A _girl_ back home?! This certainly is a new turn of events!"

Cato shrugs and grins a little wider, nodding as if even he can't believe his good fortune in having a girl back home.

"I know it's hard to believe. Me, with a girl back home? I mean, we all just saw that video, didn't we?"

Flickerman laughs, joined by the audience.

"I'll admit, it's a little hard to swallow, but after that dramatic finale you gave us, I'm inclined to believe you. I was young once, as hard to believe as that might sound-" he's cut off by laughter from the audience, and he joins in. "Yes, yes, I was young once, and I remember what it feels like to be in love with a girl. It must've been some girl to drive you to something so drastic, though. Care to tell us a little more about your girl, Cato?"

"Sure, sure. Her name's Thyme. Like the plant? I've known her since we were both really small. Our moms were friends, so yeah. Anyways, she's great. She's amazing. She's...she's pretty hot."

At this, everyone laughs and Cato chuckles along with them, praying inside that Thyme won't be too offended with what he's about to do with her image.

"I would imagine that she's quite the beauty, Cato, to have you so tightly in her grasp! _Do_ tell us a little more. Is she a feisty redhead? A statuesque blonde? A sultry brunette, maybe?" Caesar Flickerman arches an eyebrow in a mock-suggestive fashion, and Cato silently thanks him for facilitating this conversation. Maybe he knows that Cato's telling more of a story than the truth and can see that he's floundering around for details.

"Sultry brunette's not too far off, actually."

"Oh really, now?"

"Yeah. She's got that beautiful brown hair, dark brown, like...the color of those dark chocolates you guys have here? That color. It goes down to her waist, and she always keeps it down, so, you know, it's pretty tempting to just grab a handful of that and never let it go. It feels like silk, it's just...and her _curves_, yeah?" He languidly traces her silhouette in the air. "Like a violin. Absolutely _delicious_." Cato shoots a rakish smirk towards Flickerman, who smiles back knowingly.

"She sounds like _quite_ the catch."

"Oh, yeah, definitely. Skin like white peaches, lips like strawberries, the whole nine yards. But you wanna know what made me fall for her?" This is what piques Flickerman's interest. The man uncrosses his legs and leans forward in his seat, and Cato decides to milk this for all it's worth.

"I think the audience and I would very much like to know. Am I right?" Caesar Flickerman turns to the audience, which roars its approval. Cato grins and runs his hand through his hair, as though sheepish to have been caught in the crosshairs of love and romance.

"Well, it was her smile at first. Like I said, we grew up together. And ever since I was little, I just wanted to make her smile." He pauses a little for the quiet "awww"s coming from the audience before barreling on. "At first, it seemed normal. She was my friend, you know? You play together, you're happy, you smile. And if your friend's smiling too, it means she's happy, and she'll keep playing with you. So I didn't think about it at first. Then we got a little older, started going to school and all that, and I realized that it wasn't just about playdates. I loved making her happy. And I loved her smile. It made me feel...that I was good at something besides lifting weights and wrestling, you know? That she thought I mattered. And it had to be her. I couldn't get enough of her smile. And then it was her eyes. She's got gorgeous eyes, dark forest green and all, bright as all hell. They sparkled when she was happy, they froze over when she was angry, they burned when she was sad. They were just always so bright, so...full of life, yeah? And somewhere along the line, I decided that I would make sure they were always like that, always bright. And then I got a little older, and I...I just fell in love with all of her."

He grins the entire time he speaks, looking down at his shoes, glancing up occasionally at Flickerman. "I know I've probably disappointed a lot of the viewers," he says looking at the audience this time. "I'm sure some of them, some of _you_, were probably expecting me to be a ruthless fighting machine. I mean, I thought that was what I was supposed to be. I held myself up to those standards. You volunteer for the Games, you win, you go home and bring pride for your District, you know? It's the District 2 way. Has been for as long as the Games have been around. But Thyme..." He theatrically sucks in a breath of air through his teeth. "She has a way of getting under my skin, of getting under all that ruthlessness. Makes me feel totally at her mercy and totally willing to be. You know what I mean, right?"

Caesar Flickerman nods gravely, in complete sympathy. "Of course, of course. All of us here have been young and in love, I believe. And a beautiful woman has a way of doing that. And now, Cato, what exactly does this young woman have to do with that absolutely _shocking_ turn of events at the end of the Games? You won! You were going to go home and see her again! What happened?"

Cato pauses for a few moments, face falling into a serious, pensive expression.

"You know how stressful the Games can get. Always watching your back, never knowing when you're going to be attacked by something. I saw the girl from my District die in my arms, and she was my friend, too. And she was practically Thyme's sister. I know she'll never forgive me for that one, for not being fast enough."

"I'm sure she'll be able to see that you tried your best, Cato," Flickerman says reassuringly. Cato smiles back weakly.

"I hope so. Anyways, by the end, I was losing it. I kept having nightmares about going home and losing Thyme somehow, or that I wouldn't go home at all, or that Clove was haunting me, blaming me for her death. Clove made me promise to take care of her, the District 12 girl and Thyme, and I was determined to keep that promise. And I blamed the District 12 girl for Clove's death, but it always felt like in the end, it was my fault. By the time we were on the Cornucopia, I'd lost it. I just wanted to go home, but I felt like there wasn't anything worth going home for, because I failed Thyme. But if I lost, I would've broken my promise to Clove. The whole thing just got overwhelming, what with these conflicting interests and just plain exhaustion. So when I finally killed the District 12 girl, I was out of it. I thought I killed Thyme. They're so much alike, both so full of fire and determination. She looked like Clove and acted like Thyme, and it felt like Clove dying all over again, it felt like killing Thyme. So that's why I did it. That's why I stabbed myself. I couldn't live with myself, thinking that I had failed everyone: myself, Clove, Thyme. I couldn't live with myself thinking that I'd killed Thyme. I loved her so much. It just wasn't worth living if she wasn't there, especially if it was my fault she was gone, especially if I was the one that killed her. I couldn't do it. I loved her too much."

He finishes quietly, and there is a pensive silence, almost grim, before Flickerman leans forward to pat Cato on the shoulder.

"Cato, I know this is difficult for you to accept, coming from me, but I feel that if a young lady like Thyme is able to get to you so much, if you love her so much, she must really be a special girl. I really, truly believe that she doesn't blame you for Clove." Cato smiles again, a little more strongly this time.

"You really think so?"

"Of course." Flickerman's smile is warm, and, if Cato is judging correctly, even sincere.

"I'll do my best to remember that, sir," Cato says gratefully, hopefully.

"There, that's the spirit! Now, lastly, Cato, would you mind telling us...how does this young lady feel about you?" Cato smiles, flushes, and rubs the back of his neck.

"There's a baby on the way. We're getting married when I go home."

At this declaration, the audience goes wild, whooping and cheering and screaming their congratulations while giving him a standing ovation. Cato dips his head down and waves shyly at the crowd in thanks, then shakes Flickerman's hand as the man offers his words of congratulations.

"Aha! I told you! I knew she was special! I think I speak for all of us when I say that we wish you the _very best_ of luck with this young woman! To many happy years!"

"To many happy years!" the audience choruses back, almost deafeningly. When the noise finally dies down, Flickerman resumes speaking.

"And on that happy note, let's give a final round of applause for the Victor of the 74th Hunger Games,_ CATO STEELE_!"

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note: Whew. First of all, I am SO SORRY for not updating for almost 2 months. There was finals. And then winter break, which was occupied by family and friends. And then the last two weeks of school have just been insane. I'm trying to make up for it by making this chapter longer than all the others. I swear I will try my damndest to upload Chapter 20 in a month. God. College. Second of all...cookies and hugs to anyone who can guess the running theme in the title chapters. XD Much love!<em>


	20. Last Train Home

She knew it was too good to be true. She just knew it. After, well, everything, Cato was finally coming home. The train was due to pull into the station that day, and Thyme had wanted to spend the morning washing her hair out, perhaps ironing a fresh dress in preparation for Cato's arrival. Unfortunately, babies do not care if a loved one is coming home from a vicious battle to the death. They only care about whether they are delivered when they feel like being delivered. For example, Julia Lane's baby decided that it wanted to be born at five in the morning two days before, when Julia's water broke, causing her husband to hightail it to the Rivers household, shouting for Thyme and her mother, who promptly gathered their supplies and rushed off, while Thyme's father comforted the terrified father-to-be.

* * *

><p>At eleven in the morning, the master bedroom of the Lane household was not unlike a battlefield, in terms of blood content, volume level, and general chaos. Julia was lying in bed, screaming bloody murder, blonde hair damp with sweat, tendrils of it clinging to her face. Her knees are splayed open while Thyme checks between her legs and Thyme's mother holds Julia's hand, wiping the sweat off her face with a cool cloth. Sometime after first day of labor, Julia had become largely incoherent and slightly hysterical, screaming for a mother that had been dead for two years.<p>

Another contraction hits and Julia screams again. Thyme's mother reaches for the cup of blue cohosh tea on the nightstand, in an attempt to relieve some of the pain.

"Julia? Julia, here. Drink a little bit of this." Julia manages to tilt her head back between her moans of pain and Thyme's mother slowly, slowly pours some in. "There." Julia nods weakly, gasping in slight relief as the cool liquid slid down her, before her breath hitches and yet another contraction hits.

"_Aaaaaauuugh!_" Julia sobs in agony and terror. "Mom..._Mom_...I want my..._aaaaagghhhh!_" Thyme winces as tears well up in Mrs. Rivers's eyes.

"It's all right, sweetheart. You're going to be just fine." She brushes back Julia's hair, re-ties it into a braid, and slides a bracing arm behind the young woman's back. "Can you see the head yet, Thyme?"

"No, not yet." Thyme frowns.

"Well, then can you tell how far along it is?"

Thyme reaches in with her fingers, and she's in up to her knuckles when her fingertips brush against the baby.

"I can feel it, but..." Thyme blanches as her fingers gently prod around.

"What is it?" Thyme's mother's voice is tight, bracing herself for the worst.

"...fuck."

_"Thyme, what is it._"

"...The baby's breech."

Thyme's mother sits for a few seconds in shock before snapping out of it.

"Are you sure?"

"That's definitely not a head that I'm feeling."

"...You're going to have to turn it around."

Thyme looks up at her mother in horror.

"No, Mom, I can't. _You_ have to be the one to do it."

Julia screams again, sobbing for her mother and curling into Mrs. Rivers.

"No, _you'll_ do it."

"But, but I've never-"

"Thyme Rivers, you listen to me. Julia needs someone to be her mother, and you sure as hell can't be it. Now roll up your sleeves, wash your arms, and I'll talk you through it."

Thyme takes one look at Julia Lane, twenty and motherless and terrified, and so small, and nods.

* * *

><p>Two hours later, the baby's born, a little boy that Julia names Gaius. The umbilical cord is cut and while Mrs. Rivers cleans up Julia, Thyme washes Gaius and swaddles him in a soft cream blanket before placing the sleeping baby in the cradle.<p>

"Thyme! Thyme!" Thyme turns around with a start.

"Andy! I told you not to come here." She rushes the little blonde girl out into the hall. "You're supposed to stay home with Dad, remember?"

"Yeah, but the train's pulling in!"

Thyme swears.

Her dress is splattered with blood. Her hair is falling out of her bun in scraggly strands. She would not be surprised if there was blood streaked into it somewhere. Her face is painted in smears of blood. Was that blood underneath her fingernails? Yes, yes it was. Thyme closes her eyes and sighs.

"...Go down to the station and tell Cato I can't see him right now."

"But -" Andy protests.

"No buts. I still have to take care of the baby and Mrs. Lane. He can wait."

Andy scowls.

"Go." Thyme gives Andy a light shove towards the door and turns back into the bedroom.

"What was that all about?" Thyme's mother asks as she finishes helping Julia into a clean nightgown. Thyme picks up the bundle of bloody sheets on the ground to take to wash.

"Andy said the train was pulling in."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I told Andy to tell Cato that I'd see him later."

"Why don't you go now?"

Thyme turns to her mother in disbelief.

"I can't! I'm not done yet! Cato can wait, but this needs to be finished."

"You should go," Julia whispers softly from the bed. "I'll be fine."

Thyme's mother chuckles. "Of course you will be. This isn't the first baby I've delivered." She smiles at Thyme. "Go on. Go."

Thyme drops the sheets and grabs a clean cloth, dunks it into the water basin, and hastily runs it over her face and arms still drippingly wet. She's in the middle of scrubbing out the cloth when her mother intervenes.

"Oh, for the love of -" She snatches the cloth out of Thyme's hands. "Go!"

* * *

><p>Thyme flies down the stairs and races through the streets, boots cracking sharply against the pavement, heart catching in her throat. She is vaguely aware that her hair has completely fallen out of its knot into wild disarray, but she can't be bothered right now. The Justice Building is too far away. She hasn't run this hard, this far, this desperately since Cato kissed her that fateful festival night. Her skirt twists and flares around her legs and she almost trips twice but she keeps on running. She can barely breathe, what with the wind whipping against her and the tears threatening to spill out onto her face and the fact that her heart feels like it's located in anatomically-impossible areas. The baby makes nothing easier. It takes too long to get to the Justice Building. She charges down the streets that seem to go on forever, skidding around turns until the road opens up into the square and the Justice Building. A crowd is already gathering on the steps. Thyme surges towards the building, heart pounding painfully, and she feels like vomiting, like crying, like screaming, but she pushes it all down and pushes forward. When she finally reaches the steps, she shoves her way through the crowd, and everyone seems eager to get away from the wild-eyed girl with blood streaked on her face. And finally, finally, she is at the front of the crowd, next to her father, behind Mrs. Steele. He starts a little at his daughter's sudden materialization, and little Andrea, clinging onto Mr. Rivers's hand, beams.<p>

"You made it, Thyme!"

"Yes, I did."

Thyme's father raises a questioning eyebrow.

"I thought you had to help Julia Lane."

"The baby's already delivered. Mother said I could come."

He shrugs and turns back to waiting for the train, placing an arm around Thyme's shoulders. She rocks back and forth on her boot heels, pressing close to her father in apprehension. Mrs. Steele turns around and smiles weakly at Thyme, who smiles back softly.

* * *

><p>The train pulls in with a shuddering groan. Thyme can hear nothing but the blood pounding in her ears and painful thudding of her heart against her ribs as her eyes fix on the train door. It slides open slowly with a hiss of hydraulics, slowly, too slowly for her liking. The District escort comes out first, to no applause. Thyme catches a glimpse of soft blonde behind Mr. Paxton, and she shrugs off her father's arm, rising up onto the tips of her toes to get a better look. And there he is. Cato Steele, in all his glory. Thyme shrugs off her father's arm as the crowd cheers thunderously, applauding and shouting their praise, their congratulations, their welcome. He raises a hand and waves to them all, smiling, causing the cheers to surge in volume. Then, Cato catches sight of his mother, standing front and center, tears rolling silently down her face as she clasps her hands in front of her. He strides towards his mother and wraps his arms around her in a tight embrace. Mrs. Steele continues crying silently into her son's shoulder and he pats her soothingly on the back. After several minutes, she pulls back, sniffling back her last tears and places her hand on his face before stepping aside.<p>

The two of them stand there, staring at each other. Neither of them move, frozen in shock at the sight of each other in the flesh, no longer just a memory or a dream. The crowd has fallen silent, its collective breath held in the face of this bittersweet reunion. Her eyes run over his face, his cheekbones and jawline thrown into sharper relief through stress and starvation. His eyes run over all of her, from the blood smeared like war paint on her face to her softly-curving stomach to her wide-as-the-sky green eyes to her tangled, cascading mass of dark brown hair. He takes slow, almost unsteady, steps towards Thyme, who stays rooted to the ground, exhausted by Julia's two-day labor and her mad dash to the Justice Building and the fact that Cato is right there, standing not five feet away from her, alive and whole and walking towards her. She cannot believe it. None of this can be real. Her heart's still in her throat, and she finds herself feeling the same way she did when Cato was leaving, and none of it makes any sense.

"What happened?" he asks, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind Thyme's ear. A shiver runs down Thyme's spine as his fingers brush against her face.

"Julia Lane had a baby."

He runs a thumb along her jaw, and somehow, they break and trip and stumble into each other's arms, colliding into a crash of murmured names and hands tangled into hair and arms entwined around bodies.

"Cato," she whispers into the crook of his neck, and he shivers at the soft puff of warm breath against his skin. It's been so long, he thinks. Too long. "Cato," she whispers again, relishing the way his name spills out, rolls off her tongue. Her fingers card through his hair and he presses his chest against her, melting into her touch. His hands run up her back, around to the front, over the curve of her stomach, where he pauses for a moment, then slowly slides his hands over it, not believing that the baby is real, that he's going to be a father and they're going to be a family. Her breath hitches as he slowly rubs her back, arching into his hands.

"I missed you so much, Thyme," he murmurs into her ear, face buried in her hair.

"I missed you, too."

He kisses her temple, and his lips slide down the side of her face to reach hers. She kisses him back hungrily, pulling him closer to her as her hands slide down his back and back up, fingers pressing into the lean ridges of muscle, smiling lightly as a low groan rumbles in his chest. Their lips are hot against each other, sliding over each other. Her teeth catch on Cato's lower lip and he sucks in a breath of air through his teeth. Her heart catches as his tongue licks her lips. His hands come to rest around her waist and her arms wrap behind his neck, their foreheads pressed together, revelling in the closeness that both of them had waited so long for. She breathes in deeply, inhaling the warm muskiness that ghosted her dreams, and she feels herself unwinding into him, almost. She looks into his blue, blue eyes, eyes as bright and blue as the sky, and she can't look away. She's waited and screamed and waited and healed and waited and cried and waited, and here he is. Here he is. Right here. Alive. Home. Alive. Here. He falls into her eyes, forest-green and sparkling and beautiful, and for once, everything is alright. He is alive, home, with Thyme and the baby and his mother, and Thyme loves him and he loves Thyme so, so much, it hurts, but he's happy. Everything makes sense. His fingers tangle themselves into the ends of her hair, like they always do, and her face breaks into a grin.

"Welcome home, Cato."  
><strong><br>**He reaches up to cup the side of her face, brushes away a tear, smiles back and kisses her again.


	21. Together Till the End

The first night Cato's home, they find themselves in the Training Center, lying on the mats like before. They don't talk much, just lie there in each other's arms. She is bubbling over with the urge to ask him _Why, why did you try to kill yourself, why did you do it, why did you break your promise, why did you try to leave me behind, why_, but she knows that this is not the time. Cato is still too broken, too fragile. Now, the only thing she can do is be there and take care of him. It is what she does best, fixing broken things. Cato needs to know that everything is okay, and that is something she can make happen, even if she herself does not believe that everything is okay. So she curls up in Cato's arms as he holds her against him, the top of her head tucked under his chin, and feels his heart beat, solid and steady against her hand.

"I love you, Cato," she whispers into his chest, clutching to the front of shirt. He is not the only one that needs to know that everything will be okay. She knows that it will never be okay, but she wants to.

"I love you, too," he murmurs into her hair. She snuggles in closer and buries her nose into the crook of his neck and breathes him in. She has waited so long for him to be back, and he is finally here. She still can't believe it, but she knows enough of how the world works to not question her good fortune. Instead, she just sinks into the slow, steady rhythm of Cato's breathing and the solid cadence of his heartbeat and drifts off to dreamless sleep.

She's woken by Cato's screams.

"_NOOOOO! THYME! Thyme, no! Please, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry._"

"Cato. Cato! Cato, I'm right here." She fights her way out of his arms and shakes him harder and harder, pulling his hair, willing him to wake up. "Cato, it's okay. Everything's okay." He continues twitching and screaming, begging, sobbing.

"_Thyme! No, don't, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Clove. No, Thyme, please. Please. Thyme. Wake up. Wake up. THYME, WAKE UP! No. NO. Stay away. Don't come any closer. Stay BACK._"

His arm flings out, as if trying to sweep away some unseen assailant, and his the back of his hand crashes into Thyme's face, snapping her face to the side with a resounding crack. She gasp, eyes wide open in shock and pain. She'd almost forgotten how strong Cato was. Her cheekbone throbs as she holds her hand against the side of her face, the skin stinging and hot. Slowly, she backs away from him and runs to the hospital wing, filling a cup with cold water. When she returns, Cato is still shouting and flailing, and she throws the water onto him. He wakes up spluttering, eyes wide open and terrified.

"_Thyme!_" Cato gasps and bolts upright, water dripping from his face and trickling down his hair, soaking dark tracks into his shirt. He looks about wildly, looking for Thyme, who gingerly kneels down, just out of arm's reach.

"I'm right here, Cato," she says, injecting as much calm gravity into her voice as possible. His entire body sags in relief as he reaches for Thyme, who slowly scoots closer. His hand cups her cheek, and she holds his hand in place. His eyes are swimming with tears.

"I did that, didn't I?" he whispers tearfully, thumb running over the beginnings of a bruise blooming on her cheekbone in a mottled yellow-green-purple.

"No. It was dark and I ran into the doorframe."

But he shakes his head slowly, tears trickling down his face, knowing that Thyme is lying. She knew her way in the dark the way he knew his way with a sword. She never got lost in the dark.

"It doesn't matter, Cato. I'm fine." She smiles softly, almost wryly, and ruffles his hair. A silent sob shakes Cato's shoulders and he throws his arms around Thyme and drags her closer until she is nestled against his chest like a doll, her head resting on his shoulder, nuzzling into the crook of his neck, while he cries into her hair.

Eventually, his shuddering sobs give way to sniffles, and slowly, he falls asleep, wrapping Thyme into his arms like a child with a beloved plush toy, and she sinks into his touch. She's not sure what hurts more, her face or her heart.

* * *

><p>On second thought, perhaps visiting Clove's grave so soon was not as good an idea as previously believed. Tears are positively streaming down Cato's as he kneels in front of Clove's headstone, Thyme's hand resting on his shoulder. Her face is dry as stone, and she likes to think that she's cried all her tears away. She cannot afford to cry now. Cato needs her to be strong, so she will.<p>

"I'm so sorry, Clove." Cato's voice cracks with tears. "I'm so sorry." He traces the carvings on the polished black granite. _Clove Heathridge. December 3, 2294 - June 17, 2310. Daughter, sister, Tribute. An honor to District 2. _Thyme's memorized the words by now, she's been here so many times. Tears begin to sting her eyes, but she crushes them ruthlessly and swallows them down. _I don't have time for tears_. Instead, she kneels beside Cato and takes his hand into hers as his shoulders shiver in silent sobs.

"I'm sorry, Thyme," he whispers. Something sharp shoots through her heart at how broken he sounds, how he sounds as though he's expecting her to snarl and rage at him, and she squeezes his hand tighter.

"There's nothing to be sorry for, Cato. Nothing's your fault." She winces at the flatness of her voice. Sometime during her getting pregnant and Cato volunteering and Clove getting Reaped and Clove dying and Cato stabbing himself, her capacity for empathy had been significantly diminished. She tries again, warmer this time. "Really, Cato. It's not your fault. You don't have to apologize for anything." He nods weakly and she leans against him. She knows that she loves him, she doesn't love him any less than she used to, she probably even loves him more, but she wonders why it's so hard to translate her feelings into words and actions.

* * *

><p><em>Thyme, will you marry me?<em>

_Of course._

* * *

><p>A week into the wedding preparations, Thyme comes to the conclusion that weddings are overrated. Entirely overrated. District 2 weddings were simple things: a quick officiated ceremony by the mayor at the Justice Building followed by a dinner with friends and family. Then the groom carried the bride over to their new home and that was it. It did not involve the fitting of a thousand dresses or the creation of floral arrangements (she's still not sure why floral arrangements are necessary or how they work into a wedding) or the arranging of menus (Really? Menus? Multi-course meals? Why? How?) or compiling guest lists. Her list consisted of <em>Mother, Father, Andrea, Mr. and Mrs. Paxton, Julia and her husband, Mrs. Steele, and Mr. and Mrs. Heathridge<em>, but the woman on the other end of the phone paused for several seconds when Thyme read out her admittedly-short guest list and eventually was somehow forced to include all of District 2. _Why bother with guest lists, then? Just use the damn census_.

She blames Cato entirely. After declaring his undying love for Thyme and plans to wed her in front of the entire country, the Capitol seemed to feel it their personal duty to plan the wedding of the century and had descended upon District 2 en masse, ruining any semblance of peace that Thyme once had. Currently, she was being stuffed into the third of seven wedding gowns, much to her chagrin and the delight of her mother and Andrea, who were inordinately enthusiastic about participating in her suffering. This particular torture device was a fluffy, gauzy confection that looked deceptively light and comfortable when it was hanging on the rack. The bodice has a hundred lacy rosettes stitched onto it and is cinched so tightly around her waist that she can barely breathe. A frothy explosion of tulle and gauze bursts from her hipline, held up by hoops and petticoats and crinolines. The skirt's so wide around that Thyme feels like a cake topper, and she's sure that Andrea and several of her friends could fit comfortably under it. Her hips hurt from the weight of the hoops holding it up, and she's not quite sure how she's supposed to sit in this thing. She can barely stand properly, what with her ridiculous five-inch stilettos precariously propping her up against the weight of the veritable blizzard of fabric.

Her dress and shoes alone, she can tolerate, if only barely. What really sends her an inch away from the edge is her hair. Thyme is sure that there are at least a hundred pins digging into her scalp like so many tiny claws. She was not previously aware hair that could be piled to such altitudes. But somehow, the Capitol stylists have managed to use an unholy amount of hairsprays and gels and creams and starches and pins and curlers to torture her hair into a poofy, sky-high monstrosity. And not only has her hair been teased and fluffed into being its own sub-entity, but there are flowers and little puffy things with rhinestones glued on them pinned into her hair. Naturally, all Thyme wants to do is to rip out the offending pins, throw the stylists out onto the streets, wash her hair clean, slip into her old frock, and go to sleep. But Andrea is completely entranced by the princess-y gowns, the sparkles and frills, the whole opulent, chaotic, extravagant mess. Besides, the stylists fawn over the little girl with the cornsilk hair and sky-blue eyes and beautiful manners and Thyme thinks they genuinely adore Andrea (how could anyone _not_), and if enduring this torture session will let Andrea feel special and beautiful and rich, then she'll do it. And she couldn't deprive her mother of the chance to see her daughter all dressed up and about to be married off.

"Turn around," her mother instructs, and Thyme tries her best to do just that, gingerly turning, praying that she doesn't topple over on her heels and skirts. Her mother frowns.

"Hmmm. I don't know about this one. What do you think, Thyme?"

Thyme manages to summon the energy to aim a long-suffering look at her mother.

"Honestly, Mother?"

Her mother smiles wryly. "That's what I thought." She turns to the stylists, who are already preparing for the next outfit change. "Can we see the next one, please?" The head stylist, Quintus, claps his hands together gleefully.

"Of course, Mrs. Rivers! Oh, it's really _such_ a delight to dress your daughter, isn't it, girls?" The girls in question are a pair of twins, Cara and Lara, who nod rapidly in agreement and giggle.

Thyme just wants to cry.

* * *

><p>Thyme's father is not a particularly large man, not like Julius Paxton, and while he <em>is<em> tall, as tall as Cato is, it's not his height that fills Cato with a sense of ominous foreboding. It's his eyes, the same forest-green as Thyme's, only sharper, colder, harder, _crueler_. Cato remembers that this man, Daeron Rivers, was a legend in his Reaping days. His knowledge of poisons ran deeper than anyone dared to think, and his skill with a razor was made all the more terrifying when they realized that Daeron Rivers could slit a man's throat in a crowd and vanish into thin air before said man fell to the ground. The entire District was shocked and disappointed when he didn't volunteer. Cato does his best to keep his face stoic as he sits up a little straighter in his seat at the kitchen table.

"Thyme loves you," the older man states flatly. "I don't know why. You've hurt her more than enough." Cato flinches inside at the entirely-accurate statement.

"I know, sir."

Daeron shoots him a glare colder than the greatsword he stabbed himself with.

"You _know_." He spits out the last word venomously. "You don't know _anything_, Cato Steele. You didn't see the way she was when you were with Clove. After the Spring Festival, I saw her run home like seven hells were chasing her down. She locked herself into her room the whole night and wouldn't answer our questions, wouldn't come out. All I could hear was her crying into her pillow."

His voice is low, threatening, tight with barely-suppressed anger, and Cato sinks further into his guilt.

"You got her pregnant, even though you were volunteering. You put in a child in her, and then you went off to die. For what? For glory? For honor? What if you didn't come home? Or were you so arrogant to believe that you would come back for sure? Either way, you gave my daughter a child and then you volunteered. You weren't even Reaped."

The hate, the rage, it runs through his voice the way blood runs through veins, and his eyes pick Cato apart completely.

"And you didn't just leave her, you had the fucking nerve to run yourself through with your fucking sword."

Daeron clenches his hand into a fist so tight, the skin on his knuckles go painfully taut and white. His eyes (_Thyme's eyes_) are cruel and cold, an angry, vicious, _toxic_ green. Cato remembers seeing Thyme like this once before, that first night in the Training Center, but even then, they were never so deadly.

"Let me make one thing very clear, Cato Steele." Cato braced himself. "I hate you. I hate you, and nothing would make me happier than to use you as a practice dummy for the kids to slice you up. But," Daeron's voice softens and he leans back in his chair, "Thyme loves you. I don't have a fucking clue why, but she does. So I'll let this happen. But if I _ever_ have a fucking reason to believe that you're making Thyme unhappy, I will find you, strap you down, and shoot you so full of poisons, your veins will burn for hours before you vomit out your own intestines and choke on your own tongue. That clear?"

Cato nods rapidly. He has no doubt that Daeron Rivers will more than follow through on his threat.

"Now get the fuck out of here."

* * *

><p>Thyme has to admit that the wedding itself is gorgeous, despite the unimaginable amounts of pain she went through to plan it. By the end, she had left all the decisions up to her mother, which in hindsight, was probably the wisest course of action. But it was all worth it. All of District 2 has shown up in front of the Justice Building. The ice-white columns have endless yards of shimmering silver silk twisted around them and there's white camellias twisted with flickering lights strung up across the square and a long lane of silvery-white organza is laid out down the aisle. She can see Cato standing at the end, tall and handsome in his crisp black suit and black buffed-leather shoes, grinning widely. The string quartet off to the side strikes up a soft wedding march.<p>

Andrea traipses ahead happily, a little fairy in her snow-blue tulle skirts stitched with tiny white blossoms and linked with impossibly-thin vines of silver thread, wearing a circlet of apple blossoms twined with the ribbons the same blue as her dress. Her lanky blonde hair flips and swishes and she skips, tossing white camellia petals out from a small white wicker basket.

"I suppose there's no way to put this to an end?" Her father grits out between his teeth as he takes his daughter's hand in his arm.

"I'm afraid not," Thyme replies, chuckling. Her father sighs.

"Best get this over with then."

Thyme can feel everyone's eyes on her. Some are kind, some are filled with wonder, some are happy and joyful and some are bitter and judgemental, but they are all looking at _her_. She keeps her head high and keeps walking. _I look like a princess_, she thinks. _I should act like one_. And look like a princess she does. Of course, the perfect dress had to be the last, the seventh, the fucking last. But it is showstoppingly, breathtakingly _perfect_. The bodice is a corset in glowing, soft white silk, with twisting, curling vines embroidered in silver thread, dotted with tiny emerald leaves and spreading out over half of her skirt, which sweeps over the organza walkway, flaring gently from her hips and pooling around her feet in soft folds of silk. Her hair is curled and held in place by a small tiara, wrought silver and set with emeralds and miniscule diamonds. A single white ribbon is tied around her neck. The stylists had insisted on a necklace, but Thyme insisted more vehemently on the ribbon that Cato gave her so long ago (_was it really only four months ago?_).

"I love you, Daddy," she whispers through her gossamer veil, mere feet away from Cato and the mayor.

"...I love you too, Thyme. I'm proud of you."

Thyme's father hands her over to Cato, and she swears Cato gulped when her father looked at him.

Cato gently flips the veil over her face and smiles down at her. Thyme grins back. She can't remember the last time she smiled so widely. She savors the moment, runs her eyes along the slope of his nose and the line of his jaw, the sparkle in his eyes (_she's waited so long to see his eyes sparkle again_), the curve of his lips. She turns over her shoulder and grins at Andrea, who is bubbling with excitement, her face beaming with near-unbridled joy. The mayor clears his throat and Thyme turns back to Cato, the both of them grinning stupidly like lovesick puppies.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Cato Steele and Thyme Rivers, a union that is entered into not lightly and flippantly, but reverently and passionately, lovingly and solemnly, with no small amount of heart and forethought. If any present has any valid basis on which these two should not be joined in matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace."

Thyme's eyes flicker over to her father, who is tense in his seat, glowering openly at Cato. She shoots her father a warning glance, and he relaxes somewhat, but intensifies his glare. Nobody speaks.

"In light of the lack of objections, do you, Cato Steele, take Thyme Rivers to be your lawfully wedded wife, to love and to cherish, to honor and to respect, to have and to hold?"

"I do." His voice his deep, and strong in a way that it has not been since he returned.

"And do you, Thyme Rivers take Cato Steele to be your lawfully wedded husband, to love and to cherish, to honor and to respect, to have and to hold?"

"I do."

"The rings, please?"

Cato pulls out from his coat pocket a silver ring mounted with a teardrop emerald and slides it onto Thyme's ring finger. Andrea hands Cato's ring to Thyme, a silver band set with a stripe of miniscule sapphires around it, and she slides it onto Cato's finger.

"Then by the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife."

The thunderous cheering roars in Thyme's ears as Cato's lips crash against hers and for once, she lets herself think that everything will be okay.


	22. The Only Hope for Me is You

_Author's Note: I am SO SORRY for this most obscene hiatus. After I posted the 21st chapter, I had second midterms, and then finals, and then I had to move out, then summer school, then go home to Taiwan, and it was insane. Made this chapter longer to make up for it, although I fear that I may never be able to properly atone for my sins. Please enjoy!_

* * *

><p>He still sees them, Clove and the Girl on Fire, the dead girls. He sees their gunmetal-grey eyes, fading away and flickering flat. They drift through his dreams and haunt his waking hours, and all he sees is grey. Sometimes, when she looks at him, Thyme's eyes are grey as slate to him, and he has to tell himself <em>no, Thyme's eyes are green, green like summer grass, green like the forest<em>, sometimes he dreams of falling girls, little Andy and Thyme and Clove and the fire girl, all plummeting to their doom, and sometimes, when it gets really bad, he sees Clove lurking in the corners of the house, glaring at him with flat grey eyes brimming with hate, and he has to tell himself _no, Clove is dead, she's not here, it wasn't your fault, you tried, Thyme forgives you_, but he doesn't know if _Clove _forgives him.

He doesn't tell Thyme, Thyme who already has enough problems, Thyme who works in the Training Center and minds little Andy and runs errands for her parents, then comes home to cook and clean and comfort Cato when he wakes up screaming, then goes to bed and doesn't fall asleep until long after he does and pretends that tears aren't trickling from her eyes, all while being pregnant. No, he won't add another thing to the list of Things that Thyme Rivers Steele Needs to Worry About. He has never been so grateful for Thyme, who sits with him through the long, sleepless nights and holds him and murmurs soft nothings to soothe him and rubs small circles between his shoulder blades until terror gives way to exhaustion and he falls back asleep, who never loses his patience with him, despite all the things she has to take care of, despite the fact that she is grieving Clove's death too. He promised Thyme that he would be strong like stone, but he is breaking that promise every day, with every hallucination and nightmare that he has. He hates the nights, when the blankets become ropes that ensnare him and drag him down deeper into his nightmares and he thrashes wildly, desperately fighting to tear free, sweat-soaked and screaming.

"_Thyme!" He screams her name, but she remains still in front of him, as still and cold as stone. Her lips are a chalky rose-grey and her glassy eyes stare blankly at some faraway nothingness. "THYME!" He cannot accept that Thyme is gone, even as blood blossoms on her chest and pools around her, staining his hands bright scarlet and dyeing her dress black. He shakes her, but she does not respond, her head lolling to the side. "No. No, Thyme. No." He pulls her limp form into his arms and cradles her like a doll, kisses her barely-warm lips and runs his fingers through her blood-matted hair. "I'm so sorry." He lays her down slowly, gently, as if she were only sleeping, and brushes her eyelids shut. His eyes sting with welling tears as a shadow falls over him. Cato peers over his shoulder to see Thyme's assailant grinning madly at him. He lunges at the man, blinded by his tears, and his hand closes around the man's neck. His fingers dig into the hollow between neck and collarbone and rips through skin and vessels and muscles and tendons. The sharp tang of blood fills Cato's nose and, paired with the agonized, shattering screams of the man, fuels his bloodlust. He will make this murderer suffer ten, a hundred, a thousand times what Thyme suffered. His fingers drive deeper in, relishing in the man's animalistic shrieks. The man's head rips off with the satisfying, sickening symphony of squelching flesh and snapping tendons and cracking bones and his screams come to an abrupt, gurgling halt. Cato flings the man's head aside, chest heaving with harsh pants. He stares at his hands, the bright red of the dead man's blood painted over the dark, cracking brown of Thyme's. Tears fall unabashedly down his face, splashing onto his hands and dissolving the drying blood. _

_Suddenly, something collides into his back, forcing his knees to crash painfully to the ground. A pair of hands grip his neck in a stranglehold, crushing his windpipe. He chokes and gags, desperately trying pry away the locked fingers, but the long, slender, skeletal things have him in a death grip that refuses to relent no matter how much he tries to rip them away. Blood rushes to his head and pounds in his ears and throbs behind his eyes, and his head feels on the verge of exploding as black stars pop and flash in his vision. He falls to the ground and twists around to catch a glimpse of his attacker. His heart stops when he sees acid-green eyes._

Cato jumps bolt upright, panting heavily, the back of his shirt damp with sweat. Thyme stirs beside him, rising groggily and pulling herself close to his side. She draws small circles across his shoulders and down his back.

"Shhh," she whispers softly. "It's okay, Cato. Everything's okay. I'm right here." His eyes widen in terror at her touch, at her voice.

"No, no, Thyme, you're not-, you can't-, I didn't-, no, you're dead, you're dead, you're dead-" and he can't stop rambling on that Thyme is dead, because all he can think of is green eyes (_green like dead moss, green like poison_), and black (_like blood like blindness like death_) and red (_like blood like rage like blood like blood_), and he tries to push Thyme away, terrified, but she grabs his shoulders and forces him around to face her.

"Look at me, Cato." He averts his eyes, tries turning his head away, but Thyme is as immovable as stone and grabs his chin to turn his face to hers. "Look at me." And he does. "I'm not dead. I'm right here. Whatever happened in your dream was just a dream, okay?" And he nods, slowly, as acid softens into forest leaves. "Good." Thyme gathers him into her arms and Cato's heart gradually stops racing and he relaxes, bit by bit, into Thyme's arms, slumping into her embrace. He rests his head against her chest and tucks his head under his chin, and she holds him tighter, and he could die from how good, how safe, how _right_ Thyme's hug feels, and he curls closer as she hums softly, some nameless tune that gradually lulls him back to sleep.

Every day, he swears to try harder. He is District 2, he is made of stone, and stone does not break so easily.

* * *

><p>"Thyme," he asks over dinner one night. "Is there anything I can help you with?" Thyme pauses for a moment and looks up at him, frowning slightly.<p>

"Why are you asking?"

Cato stares diligently at his plate and pushes around his food with a fork.

"I just thought...doing something...might help me get better faster?" He chances a glance at Thyme, who is still studying at him with an unsettlingly blank expression. "...Well?"

"...Can you pick up Andy from school tomorrow?"

And that is how Cato finds himself standing outside the schoolhouse door the next day as dozens of children swarm around him, children that aren't much taller than his legs. Some of them rush straight home, some of them run to waiting parents, some of them form small clusters with friends, and some of them point at him with awed expressions, wide-eyed and starstruck. He smiles weakly at them, unsure of what to do, and tries to keep an eye out for the little girl that looks so much like him. Cato's beginning to panic a little over Andy's lack of an appearance when he feels a tug on his shirt and looks down to a pair of bright blue eyes that are gazing expectantly at him and suddenly, he realizes that he has no idea what to do.

"Are you here to take me home?"

Cato nods, still not knowing what to say, but his affirmation seems to be enough for Andy, who smiles and slips her hand into his. It's strange, he thinks, how small her hand is, how small _she_ is in general. She's a tiny, birdlike thing that barely reaches his waist and looks like she weighs nothing. And it never fails to strike him every time he sees her just how much she looks like him. They have the same blue eyes and the same blonde hair, down to the strands of wheat and honey running through cornsilk. The uncanny resemblance always makes him think about who Andy is to him, to Thyme, to them both. She's too old to be their daughter, he thinks, but somehow, he feels more responsible for her than an older brother would. This sense of responsibility, however, does not contribute to his conversational skills in any way, and he continues to walk on awkwardly, glancing down periodically at the little girl holding his hand. To his everlasting relief, Andy breaks the silence first.

"Why're you here today instead of Thyme?"

"Um...I asked Thyme if she needed help with anything, and uh...yeah..." he trails off lamely. He glances down nervously at Andy, wondering if the little girl would be upset that Thyme had handed her off to him. His fears are put to rest when he sees her smiling brightly, albeit inexplicably.

"I'm happy you picked me up!"

Cato arches an eyebrow, now thoroughly confused. He had no idea that girls could be this puzzling at such a young age.

"You are?"

"Yup! I've been waiting to meet you for a really long time!"

"...You have?"

Andy nods enthusiastically.

Cato's confusion only grows with every revelation, and he feels completely, helplessly lost. If he didn't know better, he'd swear that Thyme did this on purpose just to get a laugh. Actually, she probably _did _do this on purpose, although he has no idea why.

"Um...why?"

"Because there's this question I really wanted to ask you."

"And uh, what question is that?" Cato asks, wincing internally and bracing himself.

"How'd you fall in love with Thyme?"

Cato stops abruptly and stares down at Andy. He's answered this question before, on television, in front of a live audience of thousands of people and millions more on the other side of the camera. But for some reason, he finds answering _honestly_ to be hugely difficult. Matters are not helped by Andy's big blue eyes, staring back innocently and expectantly. He sighs and rubs the back of his neck, trying to find out where to start.

"Honestly, Andy? I don't really know."

The little girl furrows her brows in confusion, and when Cato fails to elaborate, her face falls slightly.

"How...how can you not know?"

Cato panics, not quite sure how to handle a five-year-old girl looking like she just got her whole world kicked repeatedly by a steel-toed boot and decides on settling her down next to him on one of the low stone benches in the district square.

"It's not...not easy to explain, Andy."

"Try? Please?"

The little girl looks up at him with blue pleading eyes, and Cato sighs, running a hand through his hair.

"I'll try."

A contented look spreads across Andy's face, and Cato can't help but smile back.

"Well, I guess it was the Spring Festival, when we were twelve."

Andy sits up a little straighter, and the movement catches Cato's eye. He looks down to see her staring back up in wide-eyed shock. Inside, Cato squirms uncomfortably under her gaze.

"...What?"

Andy snaps out of her amazed reverie and looks down at her lap, legs swinging in the air.

"Nothing."

Cato blinks.

"Anyways, yeah. We were twelve, it was the Spring Festival, and I don't know, I thought Thyme looked beautiful that night. Never thought of her that way before, not really. I mean, I always knew that Thyme was pretty, I just never thought about it. But that night...that night she really was beautiful. She looked like one of those faeries from the stories they used to tell us when we were really little, all smiling and laughing, and the lights strung up across the square were shining in her hair. She was always a great dancer, and she was just twirling around like nothing mattered. And her eyes...I always loved her eyes best, her eyes and her smile. Her eyes were always the prettiest shade of green, and they never looked brighter. So I asked her to dance."

Cato chuckles dryly at this and remembers the stunned expression on Thyme's face, her eyes widened and her mouth slightly agape.

"Well," he corrects, "I didn't really ask her. I sort of just...told her."

"Catoooo," Andy says in mock-reprimand, giggling. Cato grins back at her.

"I know, I know. I was lucky she didn't punch me in the face right there."

Andy nods.

"Very lucky," the little girl agrees solemnly. "Thyme doesn't take bullshit from anyone."

Cato jumps at the expletive coming from the mouth of this small, innocent girl, more than slightly disconcerted by her matter-of-fact delivery, as though it were simply any other word.

"Where did you learn that word?"

"Which word?"

Andy's guileless tone was beginning to creep him out.

"The word that you used when you were talking about Thyme..."

"Oh, you mean 'bullshit'?"

Cato squirms a little inside.

"...yeah..."

"Thyme said it once after the interviewers from the Capitol visited."

"..."

Andy takes his silence as a lack of comprehension and begins to elaborate.

"People from the Capitol came to interview Thyme a few days before you won and asked her lots of questions about you and she was really mad when they left and she started cutting up all the herbs really fast and started talking about how mad she was at them and how stupid they were and she refused to take any bullshit from stupid Capitol people with blinding teeth and creepy hair."

"...she said that? In those words?"

"Yup!"

Cato blinked blankly at Andy, still very disturbed by the wide-eyed, near-angelic look of innocence on her face.

"Why? Is it a bad word?

Cato can do little more than continue blinking, but somehow manages to regain his powers of speech.

"Yes, it's a bad word, and you shouldn't be saying it. Especially not out here."

"Oh, okay! But why did Thyme say it if it's a bad word?"

"...because Thyme is sometimes very...passionate."

Andy nods sagely, as though she knew perfectly what Cato meant.

"Is that also why you fell in love with Thyme?"

A vaguely dreamy look spreads across Cato's face.

"Yeah...Thyme was always like that, always stubborn as hell, doing what she wanted because she wanted to, because it mattered that much to her, and I loved her for it."

The grin on Andy's face is verging on the ecstatically beatific.

"So what happened after?"

"Well, she said okay, and we danced."

Andy scoots closer to Cato, tucking herself against his side, starry-eyed and practically vibrating with barely-restrained anticipation.

"And then?"

Cato's face glows with a soft smile as he reminisces.

"It was wonderful. It was great. It was perfect. Everything was perfect, the way she fit in my arms and rested her head on my shoulders, the way she smelled like warm mint, the way the ends of her hair tangled in my fingers, just...everything. It was like magic. And we were dancing, just swaying side to side. I mean, neither of us really knew what we were doing. We'd never danced to a slow song before. Actually, it was really kind of awkward at first. We just sort of stood there until we figured out that swaying was probably a good decision..."

Cato trails off, vaguely lost in his memories. He is jolted back to reality by Andy's insistent nudging.

"What happened next?"

"What d'you mean?"

"What happened after you and Thyme danced?"

Cato squirms a little inside and silently curses the little girl's skill for asking awkward questions.

"...nothing."

"Something happened!" Andy insists, smacking one small hand down on the bench for emphasis. "I wanna know!"

Cato looks down at her with narrowed eyes.

"Why are you so sure that something happened?"

"Because something always happens with you and Thyme."

"Like what?" Cato challenges.

"You always mess up."

Cato mutters something about "smart-ass little girls who know too much" under his breath before relenting.

"I may have kissed her," he admits grudgingly, red-faced with shame and embarrassment. "On the cheek. Sort of out of nowhere. Happy now?"

He turns to look at Andy, whose smug smirk looks more than a little unsettling on her five-year-old face.

"And then what happened?" she asks in a taunting, sing-song voice that sounds way too innocent to be innocent.

"...she sort of ran away. And I did too," Cato mumbles, face burning bright red.

"I knew it!" Andy crows triumphantly, and Cato glares balefully at her. "I _knew _you messed it up!" Cato huffs and stands up, pulling Andy along with him.

"Yeah, I messed up. Good job, Andy. Very smart. Way to go."

But his words lack bite and Andy does nothing but bite back a giggle as Cato marches resolutely forward with the little girl in tow.

* * *

><p>Thyme comes home from her parents' house with blood on her dress for the fourth time in a week. She's really getting tired of slaving over the washbasin, laboriously scrubbing out bloodstains, but between setting bones and stitching wounds and <em>cutting people open <em>to set bones and _then_ stitching the resulting wounds, Thyme just can't catch a break. She collapses into the nearest chair, folding over the kitchen table and burying her head in a tangle of arms and hair. The vague feeling of needing to start dinner creeps along the edge of her mind, but she simply can't be bothered to drag herself off the chair right now. Her feet hurt, her back aches, her knees creak, and her fingers are so close to simply breaking off her hands. Besides, Cato wasn't home yet. Dinner could wait.

Thyme's jolted awake by the opening click of the front door. She manages to prop herself up on her forearms and rubs the sleep out of her eyes, wondering when she fell asleep and how long it had been.

"Cato? Is that you?" she calls, her voice still thick with grogginess.

"Yeah."

She sees him step into the kitchen, his boots thudding softly and steadily against the wooden floors, a pensively hesitant look on his face. Rising from her seat, Thyme makes her way across the kitchen and places an open hand against Cato's cheek, searching his eyes for some hint about what was bothering him.

"You okay?"

Cato closes his eyes and exhales sharply through his nose.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. It's just..."

"Just...?

"..."

"Well?"

"AndyaskedmehowIfellinlovewithyou," Cato blurts, the words tumbling out of his mouth almost unintelligibly. Thyme surprises herself when her heart skips a beat. She thought she was long beyond the flutterings of a silly little summer girl in love, but clearly she was wrong.

"Is that it?"

Cato nods hesitantly.

"So how did you fall in love with me?" she asks, a little breathless, anticipation and anxiety swirling in her sternum and threatening to burst through her chest. She didn't know she cared so much how or when Cato fell in love her, so long as he did now. Cato rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, face once again tinged a light scarlet. He squirms for a moment before mumbling an answer.

"The Spring Festival, when we were twelve and we were dancing..." He trails off, looking apprehensively at Thyme like a small child that had just confessed to stealing cookies before dinner.

Thyme's heart stills for a moment, the wind metaphorically knocked out of her as she tries to process this information.

"You...what...when...?" Thyme dazedly makes her way over to the chocolate couch, sinking deep into its cushions. Cato hurries after her, not he edge of wringing his hands together in helpless consternation.

"Are...are you okay, Thyme? Is it the baby? What's wrong?" His eyebrows are furrowed in consternation, and a slight edge of panic is creeping into his voice.

"I'm fine..." Thyme manages weakly. "You said...you fell in love with me at the festival? When we were twelve?"

"Yeah, why?"

"...because that's when I fell in love with YOU."

It's Cato's turn to have the wind metaphorically knocked out of him as he drops down onto the couch next to Thyme, equally dazed.

"...damn."

Thyme curls up next to Cato, leaning her head against his shoulder.

"Why'd you fall in love with me, then?"

"I thought you were beautiful," Cato replies simply. "You were smart and dangerous and beautiful and you had _heart_, and I loved you for it. I'd never met any other girl with so much heart."

Thyme scoffs.

"Please, Cato. Any heart that I have is reserved solely for small children and the seriously ill and injured."

Cato grins and throws an arm around Thyme's shoulders.

"Of course. How could I forget," he teases. "Your lack of heart explains why you've been helping me with my nightmares almost every night for a month."

"...dammit. I've been discovered."

Cato laughs and pulls Thyme closer. She wraps her arms around his waist and rests her head against his chest.

"Why did you fall in love with me, then?" he asks quietly, stroking her hair.

"...you were strong. You never made fun of me. You stood up for me all the time. You made me laugh. I loved your smile, the way your eyes were so full of life, the way _you _were always just so full of life." Thyme pauses for a moment. "Oh, also, you were really handsome." She shoots Cato a cheeky grin, which he returns with a softer grin. The two of them fall into a peaceful silence as the sun sets, casting buttery yellow and violet hues into the sky and bathing the living room in a soft, candle-lit glow. Thyme rests against the steady rise and fall of Cato's chest as he breathes, counts the solid thumping of his heartbeat, and is gradually lulled to sleep by both as Cato threads his fingers into her hair.


	23. Author's Note: Makeovers and Restarts

Hey, everyone! I know it's been an obscene amount of time since my last update, but massive writer's block paired with the torture that is college has prevented me from writing anything. Also, I went back and found a bunch of plot holes and contradictions and rushed plotlines and generally shit writing, _so_...

I'm restarting this fic. All over. From the beginning. With better, college-educated writing this time and less high school melodrama. I'm so sorry to everyone who followed this fic and waited faithfully, only to be disappointed by my lack of productivity. Thyme and Thyme Again 2.0 will be much better.


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